Performing National Identity in Postcolonial Indonesia

PERFORMING NATIONAL IDENTITY IN POSTCOLONIAL INDONESIA

SARAH MOSER B.A. (University of Victoria) MLA (University of Toronto)

A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

2008

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Acknowledgements It has been a unique experience and great privilege to live and study for an extended period in Singapore. It is has been an unforgettable learning experience that I will always cherish. I am grateful for the generous financial support that I have received from the National University of Singapore which has made my stay in Singapore and my research in Indonesia possible.

During my PhD, I have established an international network of wonderful people to whom I owe many thanks.

I extend my deepest thanks to my supervisor, Lily Kong, for her patience, kindness, sense of humour, encouragement and her faith in me. She has been a wonderful mentor and I feel extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to have worked with her.

My friends in the Geography Department at NUS have kept my spirits up and have offered me advice, friendship, and the occasional kick in the pants, in particular: Rita, Tricia, Kaoko, Vani, Kim Leng, Matthias, Winston, Haja Salina, Jingnan, Diganta, Kanchan, B. Putra, Natalie, Kamal, Linda, Noor, Monica, Tracey, Anant, Christine and also honorary geographers, Taberez and Smita.

I appreciate the input from Jan Mrázek, Victor Savage, Natalie Oswin, Budi Sulistiyanto, Johannes Widodo, Brenda Yeoh, and Shirlena Huang, who, at various points during the thesis, offered me sound advice and thoughtful comments that have helped me through this process.

I am particularly indebted to my friends in various parts of Indonesia who have been helpful, hospitable and generous with their time. I thoroughly enjoyed my time on Pulau Penyengat, where residents very kindly opened their doors to me, patiently humoured me, and allowed me to be a part of their lives.

Finally, my partner Michael Hendricks has been my most constant source of stimulating discussion, support, encouragement, and editing assistance.

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Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... II TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... III SUMMARY ...... VI LIST OF TABLES ...... VII LIST OF FIGURES ...... VII CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION: PERFORMING THE NATION ...... 1

1.1 OUTLINING THE RESEARCH ...... 1 1.2 CONTEXT OF STUDY ...... 4 1.3 FIELD SITE ...... 11 1.4 THESIS STRUCTURE ...... 18 CHAPTER 2 – POWER, PERFORMANCE, AND IDENTITY IN INDONESIA ...... 24

2.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 24 2.2 IDEOLOGY AND POWER RELATIONS IN LANDSCAPE ...... 25 2.3 PERFORMANCE AND PERFORMATIVITY ...... 30 2.3.1 Origins and appeal ...... 31 2.3.2 Performance and performativity in geography ...... 38 2.3.4 Challenges and limitations of performance and performativity ...... 46 2.3.5 Reformulating performance: layering and intentionality ...... 48 2.4 INDONESIAN NATIONALISM ...... 51 2.5 APPROACHES TO UNDERSTANDING POWER IN INDONESIAN SOCIETY ...... 57 2.6 SUMMARY ...... 62 CHAPTER 3 – METHODOLOGY ...... 65

3.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 65 3.2 FIELDWORK CONTEXT ...... 65 3.2.1 Conducting research in Indonesia ...... 66 3.2.2 Pulau Penyengat: Research in a small Malay village...... 69 3.3 PRECEDENTS: METHODOLOGY FOR PERFORMANCE AND PERFORMATIVITY ...... 72 3.4 METHODS ...... 75 3.4.1 Primary and secondary sources ...... 76 3.4.2 Participant observation ...... 78 3.4.3 Selecting interviewees ...... 82 3.4.4 Interviews ...... 83 3.4.5 Focus groups ...... 86 3.5 ETHICS...... 93 3.6 SUMMARY ...... 97 CHAPTER 4 – COLONIAL INFLUENCES ON INDONESIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY ...... 98

4.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 98 4.2 COLONIAL OCCUPATIONS ...... 98 4.2.1 The Dutch Period ...... 98 4.2.2 The Japanese Period ...... 100 4.2.3 The colonial Javanese? ...... 106 4.3 GEOGRAPHICAL BOUNDARIES ...... 106 4.4 NATIONAL PHILOSOPHY ...... 109 4.5 LANGUAGE ...... 112 4.6 RACE AND CULTURE...... 113 4.7 SUMMARY ...... 116 CHAPTER 5 – THE NATION AT WORK ...... 117

5.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 117 5.2 WORK AND IDENTITY ...... 119 iv

5.3 STATE WORKERS ...... 125 5.3.1 Pre‐Independence work ...... 126 5.3.2 Post‐Independence work ...... 127 5.3.3 Uniforms ...... 129 5.3.4 Upacara Bendera ...... 140 5.3.5 Senam Pagi Indonesia...... 143 5.3.6 Office performances ...... 147 5.4 NON‐STATE WORKERS ...... 152 5.5 STATE ‘VOLUNTEERS’ ...... 159 5.5.1 Strategic non‐state volunteerism ...... 167 5.6 SUMMARY ...... 169 CHAPTER 6 – EDUCATING THE NATION ...... 172

6.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 172 6.2 EDUCATION AND NATION‐BUILDING ...... 174 6.2.1 School ritual as performance ...... 178 6.3 SETTING THE STAGE FOR NATIONAL SCHOOLING ...... 179 6.3.1 Education under the Dutch ...... 179 6.3.2 Indigenous education initiatives during colonial times ...... 182 6.3.3 Education under the Japanese ...... 184 6.4 DRESSING THE STUDENT‐CITIZEN ...... 187 6.5 SENAM PAGI INDONESIA ...... 194 6.6 UPACARA BENDERA ...... 200 6.7 ‘ETHNIC’ EDUCATION ...... 212 6.8 SUMMARY ...... 223 CHAPTER 7 – THE NATION AT PLAY ...... 226

7.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 226 7.2 LEISURE AND POPULATION IMPROVEMENT ...... 229 7.2.1 Improving the individual through play ...... 232 7.2.2 Nation‐building through sports ...... 234 7.2.3 Dance and national identity ...... 238 7.3 THE DEVELOPMENT OF LEISURE IN THE INDIES ...... 240 7.3.1 Pre‐rationalized leisure ...... 240 7.3.2 Leisure and the nationalist movement ...... 242 7.3.3 Recreation under the Japanese occupation ...... 245 7.4 POST‐INDEPENDENCE LEISURE: ‘COMPLETELY NEW INDONESIANS’ ...... 246 7.4.1 Volleyball and other ‘modern’ national sports ...... 249 7.4.2 TAKRO ...... 253 7.4.3 Gerak Jalan ...... 261 7.4.4 ‘Unity in Diversity’ through dance ...... 270 7.5 SILENCES OF STATE LEISURE ...... 280 7.6 SUMMARY ...... 283 CHAPTER 8 – CONCLUSION...... 285

8.1 CHAPTER SUMMARIES ...... 285 8.2 CONTRIBUTIONS AND FINDINGS ...... 289 8.3 DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH ...... 294 8.4 FINAL COMMENTS ...... 295 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 296 GLOSSARY OF ACRONYMS AND NON‐ENGLISH TERMS ...... 319 APPENDIX 1 ‐ BIOGRAPHIES OF INTERVIEWEES ...... 322

TABLE A – SCHOOL CHILDREN ...... 322 TABLE B – YOUTHS ...... 324 TABLE C – STATE WORKERS ...... 325 v

TABLE D – ADULTS – NON‐STATE WORKERS ...... 327 TABLE E – SENIOR CITIZENS ...... 332 APPENDIX 2 – QUESTIONS FOR INTERVIEWEES ...... 334

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Summary

Performing National Identity in Postcolonial Indonesia

Since the first independence movements began in the early twentieth century

Dutch East Indies, much energy has been devoted to the development of an

Indonesian identity that both differentiates the new nation from its colonizers and links people separated by geography, history, ethnicity, language and class. Such national self-imagining is commonly articulated spatially through state designed or designated landscape and through the performances of national identity by its citizenry. Through an examination of work, education and play, this thesis broadly seeks to understand the spatiality of performance and explore the relationship between

landscape and the performance of national identity. My research is focused around

three main objectives. First, I seek to understand the role of performance in the

formation, dissemination, and enforcement of official national identity in postcolonial

Indonesia. More specifically, I intend to analyze how the national landscape

functions as a cultural practice and expose the strategies employed by the state to

encourage citizens to perform various identities within the context of power

relationships embedded in national landscapes. Second, I intend to examine the ways

in which performances of national identity have and have not changed over the course

of the Old Order and New Order and into the present. Third, I will explore how

national identities are understood, accepted, resisted and reinterpreted by the citizenry

in complex and often conflicting ways on a range of scales and locations.

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List of Tables Table 1 - Objectives, informational requirements and methods ...... 76 Table 2 - Schedule of fieldwork ...... 79 Table 3 - Sites for participant observation ...... 80 Table 4 – Selection of interviewees ...... 83 Table 5 - Focus groups ...... 90 Table 6 - Pulau Penyengat elementary school uniform schedule ...... 189

List of Figures Figure 1.1 - Context map of Indonesia showing the location of Bintan and Jakarta ...... 12 Figure 1.2 - Context map of Riau Islands, Tanjung Pinang and Pulau Penyengat ...... 12 Figure 1.3 - Pulau Penyengat ...... 15 Figure 1.4 - Main jetty on Pulau Penyengat with the historical mosque (upper right) ...... 16 Figure 1.5 - A stretch of village between the two jetties ...... 16 Figure 4.1 - Indonesia's bureaucratic structure ...... 105 Figure 4.2 – Classroom posters of traditional costumes and houses of the Indonesian provinces ...... 115 Figure 5.1 – Sukarno proclaims Independence, August 17, 1945; Sukarno in a self-styled military uniform; Sarong, traditionally worn by many South and Southeast Asians (from left: a, b, c) ...... 131 Figure 5.2 - Old Korpri batik, safari suit, new Korpri batik, civil servant track suit (from left: a, b, c, d) ...... 133 Figure 5.3 - Government employees wearing baju Melayu and baju kurung at work (from left: a, b, c, d) ...... 137 Figure 5.4 - Japanese doing group callisthenics ...... 144 Figure 5.5 - Voluntary Senam Pagi Indonesia ...... 146 Figure 5.6 - Marching competition - rickshaw drivers in military costumes ...... 154 Figure 5.7 – Students parading 'Developing professions' in the National Day parade - 'Accountants' and 'Salespeople' ...... 157 Figure 5.8 - Students parading 'Developing professions' in the National Day parade – ‘Front office’, ‘Reservation section’, ‘Reception’ ...... 158 Figure 5.9 - Students parading 'Developing professions' in the National Day parade – 'Housekeeping' ...... 158 Figure 5.10 - Gotong-royong project - path-side planters ...... 164 Figure 5.11 - Gotong-royong - 'volunteers' repainting a neighbourhood gate ...... 167 Figure 5.12 - Gotong-royong 'volunteers' ...... 167 Figure 6.1 - School uniforms on Pulau Penyengat (from left: a, b, c, d, e, f, g) ...... 189 Figure 6.2 – A page from the national Senam Pagi Indonesia instruction manual (1960s) ...... 195 Figure 6.3 - Senam Pagi Indonesia in the school yard ...... 196 Figure 6.4 - Senam Pagi Indonesia, Indonesia's Morning Exercise ...... 197 Figure 6.5 - Upacara Bendera, Flag Ceremony - students ...... 201 Figure 6.6 - The Flag Ceremony elite ...... 203 Figure 6.7 - Raising the flag ...... 204 Figure 6.8 - Reading the opening of the Constitution ...... 205 Figure 6.9 - Upacara Bendera, Flag Ceremony ...... 205 Figure 6.10 – Minor non-conformity at the Flag Ceremony ...... 207 Figure 6.11 - 'Unity in Diversity' text (Rahimsyah 2007) ...... 213 Figure 6.12 - Museum Nasional at Taman Mini - ethnic costume displays ...... 214 Figure 6.13 - Ethnic costume displays – Taman Mini ...... 214 Figure 6.14 - Students display 'Unity in Diversity' at the National Day parade ...... 217 Figure 6.15 - 'Unity in Diversity' on parade ...... 218 Figure 6.16 - 'Unity in Diversity' on parade ...... 218 Figure 6.17 - 'Unity in Diversity' on parade ...... 219 Figure 6.18 - Indigenous games taught in P.E. class - walking on coconut shells ...... 221 Figure 6.19 - Indigenous games in after school team activities - takro lesssons ...... 222 Figure 7.1 - Neighbourhood badminton court with a measured court, referee chair, lighting ...... 251 Figure 7.2 - Football field: overgrown and disused ...... 251 Figure 7.3 – Warming up for a takro match in the main square ...... 254 viii

Figure 7.4 - Takro practice next to the mosque ...... 256 Figure 7.5 - Indonesian boys on a Japanese marching drill ...... 262 Figure 7.6 - Practicing for the marching competition - uniforms are unveiled on competition day ..... 263 Figure 7.7 - Getting coached for Gerak Jalan ...... 263 Figure 7.8 - Mass Gerak Jalan lessons ...... 264 Figure 7.9 - Marching competition - at the starting line ...... 265 Figure 7.10 - Watching Gerak Jalan ...... 267 Figure 7.11 - Marching competition uniforms - the winning team and their sponsor ...... 269 Figure 7.12 - Marching competition uniforms: Conservative nationalism ...... 269 Figure 7.13 - Marching competition uniforms: Cool nationalists ...... 270 Figure 7.14 - Marching competition uniforms: punk nationalists? ...... 270 Figure 7.15 - A Pulau Penyengat dance group after a performance ...... 273 Figure 7.16 - Pulau Penyengat dancers ...... 274 Figure 7.17 - Pulau Penyengat Dancer with betelnut set (same girl also in Fig. 7.11, far left) ...... 276

*all figures are the author’s own unless noted otherwise 1

Chapter 1 – Introduction: Performing the Nation

1.1 Outlining the research When visiting Indonesia, I am always impressed by the vastness of the country

and how remote and unconnected it all seems. At the same time, I am struck by the

fact that wherever I am, no matter how long I have been on a ferry or bus, and no

matter how far from Jakarta or how remote the village, I nearly always notice some

tangible evidence of state presence. This evidence often appears as a sign listing the

five tenets of Pancasila, promoting family planning, or conveying other such state

ideology in a standardized concrete marker or mural. Evidence of the state also

consistently appears in the form of performances such as the singing of national

songs, the recitation of a national pledge, doing public group callisthenics, or the

performing of scheduled ‘national’ rituals such as the weekly Upacara Bendera, or

Flag Ceremony. The state also surfaces through the more intimate scale of the body in

national birth control programs and clothing, such as in the uniforms worn by civil

servants and school children and the free political t-shirts given out by parties at

election time. These official identifiers of Indonesia can be seen alongside informal,

non-state-derived symbols of national identity such as eating Indomie1 and dangdut, a widely popular Indonesian music style.

A common thread that ties these observations together is the element of active citizen performance, the doing aspect of national identity that, through repetition, serves to confirm national membership, to normalize and naturalize the authority of the state, and to inculcate the appropriate version of national identity. Broadly defined, performance is a useful way in which to understand how official national

1 A popular instant noodle produced in Indonesia 2

identities are created by the state and then propagated. My approach is based on the

premise that performances are spatial in the sense that they occur somewhere. In this way, my project seeks to explore the relationship between these performances of national identity and the spaces of national identity.

The cultural and political construction of Indonesia, the intrusive role of the state, and its attempts to shape its citizens have been the focus of a number of recent academic investigations (Pemberton 1994; Widodo 1995; Parker 2003; Bodden 2007).

However, no analysis of Indonesia to date has dealt specifically with the creation of national identity through everyday performances and space. This thesis seeks to fill a gap in current research by exploring the relationship between landscape and the performance of national identity in the context of postcolonial Indonesia. My objectives are threefold. First, I seek to understand the role of performance in the formation, propagation, and enforcement of official national identity in postcolonial

Indonesia. More specifically, I intend to analyze how the landscape functions as a cultural practice and expose the strategies employed by the state to encourage citizens to perform various identities within the context of power relationships embedded in national landscapes. Second, I aim to examine the ways in which performances of national identity have and have not changed over the course of the Old and New

Order and into the present. Third, I am interested in understanding how official national identities are understood, accepted, resisted, reinterpreted and ignored by the citizenry through performance, non-performance or alterative performances in a variety of landscapes, particularly at the level of the village. While performances of national identity are interpreted in varied ways by villagers, they are conceptually linked to spectacular places in Jakarta and are intended to function as miniature, scaled-down versions of their ‘parent’ in the national capital. The value in a village 3

study is to examine the interplay between Jakarta and the village and to understand

how a remote village, far from the nation’s capital, has been ‘incorporated into the

totalizing and homogenizing Indonesian nation-state’ (Parker 2003: 11). As much of the scholarship on postcolonial Indonesia has accentuated differences between Old and New Orders and the post-New Order era, another contribution I hope to make in this thesis is to explicitly examine the extent to which changes in leadership affect national landscapes and citizens’ sense and performance of national identity.

With regard to theory, the broad aim of my research is to contribute to current

understandings of the spatiality of performance by formulating a workable notion of

‘performance’ itself. This will be achieved by drawing upon theoretical and

methodological work in landscape studies, cultural geography, feminist theory, poststructuralism, postcolonialism and Indonesian studies. In my specific empirical

case, I seek to understand official notions of the ideal Indonesian citizen and the

strategies by which this ideal is constructed, propagated and reproduced at the village

level, particularly through repetitive performance.

Based on the belief that architecture, facilities, infrastructure and citizens’

bodies can function as stages on which to exhibit performances of national identity,

my research explores how the state envisions the ideal citizen and then how it goes

about creating / designating ‘national’ landscapes to actualize this ideal. Since an

ideal can never be completely realized, I seek an understanding of how citizens

reinterpret, renegotiate and disrupt this ideal.

Theoretical tools I employ in this study include various approaches to the

analysis of performance and Foucault’s concept of governmentality. These concepts are complementary in many ways and also share, in my view, some similar problems.

Much of the work on performativity, though not inherently spatial, reveals some key 4

insights about the social construction of identity. While much of the work focuses on

performing gender and sexuality, I believe some of the ideas can be extended to a

study of the performance of national identity. Foucault has made valuable

contributions in his work on surveillance, governance, social control and in

articulating how built space can control and discipline citizens and help shape

identity. The concept of governmentality is particularly useful in thinking about the

power relations embedded in landscape and how they affect performance in that

landscape. While these concepts are useful ways to think about the relationship

between space and performance, both fail to attribute adequate agency to the

‘performers’. These theoretical influences and others will be covered more

extensively in Chapter Two, in which I also articulate my conceptual framework.

1.2 Context of Study In this section I provide a brief contextual overview of the development of

Indonesian nationalism, some of the competing views of Indonesian nationalism, and a general summary of the respective regimes of Sukarno and Suharto and the subsequent presidencies. This section also provides an overview of my field site,

Pulau Penyengat, and the national capital of Jakarta.

What is now Indonesia was colonized in stages starting in 1605 by the Dutch, who were seeking domination of the lucrative spice trade. By the early 20th century,

the Dutch had consolidated rule over all of the territory (with the exception of East

Timor) that consitutes the post-independence borders of Indonesia, referring to it as

the ‘Dutch East Indies’. The earliest nationalist movements in the Dutch East Indies

began in the early 1900s and Indonesians have since struggled to develop a national

identity that distances themselves from their colonial past and unites people separated

by geography, history, ethnicity, class, and language. While Indonesia was quickly 5

accepted as a legitimate state by world powers after World War II, there were fierce internal struggles over power and competing leadership claims. Meanwhile, the state struggled to create an air of legitimacy and convince its new citizens that being united under ‘Indonesia’ was not only the natural state of the archipelago but was to the benefit of all. The boundaries of the nation have been contested continuously by various groups since independence, requiring the state to justify its existence and domination through the invention of a national identity along with a set of national myths and traditions. Despite attempts to distance themselves from the Dutch colonizers and the Japanese Occupation (1942-45), aspects of each period have been integrated into the identity of the new nation.

The earliest national imaginings among people in the Dutch East Indies emerged in the early 1900s and have been outlined by many scholars (Kahin 1952;

Zed 1991; Pemberton 1994; Siegel 1997; Mrázek 2002; Laffan 2003). They have explained Indonesian nationalism as the result of a complex range of influences including the development of a lingua franca (Bahasa Indonesia), the introduction of certain technologies (railroads, asphalt, radio, newspaper), higher levels of education for indigenous people, changes in Dutch colonial policies, and broad philosophical changes in Europe. It was in the early decades of the 20th century that the national language (bahasa Indonesia), the flag (Merah Putih, or ‘Red and White’), the national anthem and other symbols of ‘Indonesia’ were decided upon by nationalist groups.

Despite the early unity shown in such decisions, fiercely contested views of nationhood between different groups underscored the tensions and struggles as various groups vied for power during the decades prior to Independence in 1945. The ultimate triumph of Sukarno and the Republicans may now appear inevitable, but their victory was by no means assured as various Muslim, communist and nationalist 6

parties grew powerful and competed with the Republican vision of Indonesia (Zed

1991; Effendy 2003; Friend 2003).

As this thesis spans Sukarno’s Old Order (1950-65), Suharto’s New Order

(1965-98) up until the present, here I will provide a brief contextual overview of

Sukarno’s and Suharto’s reigns and of events that have taken place since the fall of

Suharto. Referred to now in Indonesia as the ‘Father of Indonesia’, Sukarno was originally trained as an architect at a Dutch technology institute in Java and was one of the few locals to receive a higher education by the Dutch. As a die-hard nationalist who believed in an Indonesia free from foreign influence and domination, Sukarno attempted to create a nation that was inclusive of religious and ethnic diversity while melding nationalism, aspects of Islam, and communism. With a reputation as an eternal revolutionary, Sukarno emerged as a dynamic and influential leader in the struggle against Dutch rule. Japan’s WWII expansion into Southeast Asia led them to take power of the Dutch East Indies in 1942. The Japanese controlled political life by confining all political activity to Java, by appointing all political leaders, and by setting the political agendas (Owen 2005). Recognizing Sukarno and future vice-

President Hatta as popular leaders, the Japanese selected them to lead Japanese- created local political organizations in the hopes that it would help pacify the population. Sukarno and Hatta in turn saw an opportunity to accelerate Indonesian independence by cooperating with the Japanese. The Japanese occupation of

Indonesia (1942-45) played an important role in fostering Indonesian nationalism

(Kahin 1952). They encouraged anti-European sentiments, facilitated the development and widespread use of Bahasa Indonesia, and established many of the national rituals that were carried out after Independence, thus setting the tone for official national identity. During the Japanese occupation, those who sought independence based on 7

ethnic lines were cut off from Java and the nationalists, and hence from nationalist political activity. As Japanese-appointed leaders of various political organizations,

Sukarno and Hatta were well-positioned to seize power after the defeat of the

Japanese (Owen 2005). Just two days after the emperor of Japan announced surrender,

Sukarno and Hatta announced Indonesia’s Independence on August 17, 1945.

Soon after, British forces, which had been fighting in the region, arrived in

Indonesia to reclaim the Indies on behalf of the Dutch and to supervise the surrender of the Japanese (Poulgrain 1998). Until enough Dutch forces arrived from Europe, the

British guarded Dutch interests in the Indies by suppressing independence movements while trying to prevent such revolutionary ideas from spreading to their colony of

Malaya. The Dutch and British economies were in tatters after WWII and both sought to revive them in part by assuming control of their colonies. A four-year military struggle ensued, in which the Dutch attempted to reconstruct their pre-WWII colony by weakening nationalists through killing and imprisonment. Sukarno, Hatta, and others in the Indonesian government were imprisoned by the Dutch, a move that acknowledged their power and popularity, thereby unintentionally legitimizing their claims to leadership. Sukarno and Hatta conducted interviews with the foreign press from prison and continued to gain international attention and sympathy. As Europe and North America preached sovereignty and freedom from imperialism at home, it became more difficult for the Dutch to deny that same freedom to their former colony.

Nationalists who supported a united and independent Indonesia increasingly gained external support for their revolution, which led to several negotiations and ultimately a timetable for Dutch withdrawal in 1949. Once again, Sukarno and Hatta declared

Independence. This time, they had the support of the international community and

Indonesia was formally recognized as a state by the United Nations. 8

During Sukarno’s presidency, ties with China were strengthened, Communist

Party members within the government increased, and Indonesia accepted Soviet aid.

Relations with the Netherlands were severed over the disputed control of West Papua.

During the period of military confrontation between Indonesia and Malaysia (1963-

66), the U.S. ended military aid to Indonesia2. International relations further

deteriorated until Sukarno withdrew Indonesia from the U.N. Security Council and

severed remaining links with the capitalist world (International Monetary Fund,

Interpol, World Bank) in 1965. The economy was stagnant under Sukarno and

standards of living in Indonesia were among the lowest in the world.

Sukarno faced numerous challenges to his leadership by the military in the

1950s and survived a number of assassination attempts. As a result, Sukarno

established what he called ‘Guided Democracy’ in an effort to restore order. While he

maintained a multi-party parliament, he wielded progressively more executive powers

until 1963, when he declared himself president for life. Unsurprisingly, his arrogance

and ineptitude in stabilizing the country angered many competing powers vying for control of the state.

In 1965 six anti-communist generals were murdered in an ‘attempted coup’,

supposedly by communists in order to cleanse the government and give momentum to

the revolution (Owen 2005). General Suharto took the initiative to crush the coup,

identifying the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) as the perpetrators and Sukarno as

complicit. Sukarno was placed under house arrest until his death in 1970 and

2 The Confrontation between Malaysia and Indonesia from 1963-66, or Konfrontasi as it is more commonly called, was the culmination of long-term hostility between Indonesia and the British colonial authorities that stemmed from the end of WWII when British troops had attempted to reclaim the Indies on behalf of the Dutch. According to Poulgrain (1998), Konfrontasi began with Britain purposely provoking Indonesia in 1963. After WWII, Britain relied upon Malaysia, Singapore and North Kalimantan as a source of badly-needed income. To ensure this income continued to flow, Britain felt the area needed to be rid of all Indonesian influences. Britain proceeded to conduct a series of land and air provocations in Kalimantan, Sumatra, and Riau. This, combined with Indonesia’s deep suspicion that the Federation of Malaysia was nothing but a puppet for the British, led Sukarno to order navy ships into Malaysian waters. Konfrontasi created a threat to Singapore, Malaya and Borneo, and ultimately served to unite the three states under the Federation of Malaysia (Poulgrain 1998). 9

members (or suspected members) of the Communist Party were purged from the government by the military. For almost two years, General Suharto promoted an atmosphere that encouraged civilians, particularly on Java and Bali where the

Communist Party was centred, to massacre communists, suspected communists and

those believed to be communist sympathizers. While the official Indonesian state version of the massacre maintains that the PKI was responsible for the murder of the

generals, there has been much scholarly speculation that Suharto, aided by the United

States, coordinated the assassinations to remove rivals and destroy the increasingly

powerful Communist Party. The United States government is believed to have played a key role in this anti-communist activity due to its deep fear of the ‘domino effect’, a

process that would cause one state after another in Southeast Asia to adopt

communism as their central political ideology (Vatikiotis 1993; Ricklefs 2001). In

keeping with its Cold War strategy, the U.S. supported the military as well as

encouraged popular retaliations against the communists (Anderson and McVey 1971;

Friend 2003). It is estimated that by 1966 over half a million Indonesians, mainly

rural civilians, had been killed by the military, anti-Communist Suharto supporters,

and civilians (Ricklefs 2001). After waiting patiently for two years, Suharto extracted

a transfer of presidential powers from Sukarno and a purged national assembly

confirmed Suharto as president in 1967.

Suharto established what he termed the Orde Baru, or New Order. He immediately abandoned ties with the communist world and focused on strengthening relations with the West and the United Nations. Within Indonesia, he disbanded labour organizations and controlled the media. As the state bureaucracy greatly expanded during Suharto’s presidency, the citizenry was increasingly brought into contact with state ideology through social programs, policing, schooling, leisure 10

activities and urban symbolism. Citizens were increasingly encouraged to join state- controlled organizations such as women’s groups, volunteer and gotong-royong groups and mass youth organizations.

While the economy improved and stabilized under Suharto, nagging issues of legitimacy plagued his rule and corruption and military brutality were rampant during the New Order. The election of 1997, the most violent of the Suharto regime (Ricklefs

2001), was a focal point for social and political unrest. Combined with the economic crisis of 1997-98, opposition mounted against Suharto until he was forced, after thirty-two years, to heed the widespread demands for his resignation in May of 1998.

Suharto’s chosen successor, B. J. Habibie, faced a public eager for change and suffering greatly from conditions caused by the monetary crisis, which caused the

Indonesian economy to shrink by 13.5% in 1998 after decades of steady growth.

Habibie resigned after a turbulent year and a half in office, announcing just two days before the elections of October 1999 that he would not seek another term. This decision was favorably received by reformers who claimed he was simply a puppet of the former regime. During his short presidency, Habibie consistently protected

Suharto, failed to curb government corruption or improve the economy, and was unable to halt the violence in Aceh and Maluku and prevent the bloodbath in East

Timor which followed the referendum on independence. However, while president

Habibie also pushed for decentralization and allowed for democratic elections.

Habibie’s successor, Abdurrahman Wahid (popularly known as Gus Dur), was slightly more successful at fighting corruption and significantly reduced the military’s role in politics, yet he was not able to strengthen Indonesia’s devastated economy or stem the growing separatist movements in the outer provinces. While Gus Dur’s pluralistic democratic vision was widely praised, he was unable to unite the 11

population behind a sense of common national purpose. More importantly, he did not

effectively address the most glaring social issue threatening Indonesia’s stability: the growing gap between the rich and poor. After serving only eighteen months of his four-year term, the People’s Consultative Assembly impeached Wahid and gave

Megawati Sukarnoputri, his former vice president, the presidency. A daughter of

Indonesia’s first president Sukarno who had enjoyed immense popular support during

Suharto’s presidency, Megawati’s presidency was no more successful than Wahid’s in confronting Indonesia’s myriad problems.

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (popularly called ‘SBY’) was the dark horse candidate who emerged as the victor in the 2004 run-off election against President

Megawati. While many Indonesians were initially relieved that a former military man was taking the helm after what many considered a disastrous experiment with civilian leadership, SBY has struggled with little success to improve the daily lives of the masses of poor and to effectively curb government corruption. His presidency has also coincided with many tragic national events (earthquakes, tsunami, volcanic eruptions, airplane and ferry accidents). Many Indonesians are increasingly considering SBY as cosmically incompatible with holding the title of president, a superstitious view which assumes that larger forces will ensure the continuation of tragedies as long as SBY is president. With this national context in mind, I now turn to discussion of my particular field site within Indonesia.

1.3 Field site In this section, I will provide a brief overview of and rationale for choosing my field site of Pulau Penyengat, a small village within the province of Riau Islands

(see Figures 1.1 and 1.2). I will also provide some contextual background about the 12

national capital of Jakarta as national landscapes at the village level are closely connected to developments in Jakarta.

Figure 1.1 - Context map of Indonesia showing the location of Bintan and Jakarta

Figure 1.2 - Context map of Riau Islands, Tanjung Pinang and Pulau Penyengat

13

I selected the Riau Islands in part because it was not located in Java or

Sumatra, both of which were key sites of struggle in the Indonesian Revolution (1945-

49) and have long and complex relationships with national identity issues. Java, as the

most populous island and home to the national capital, is thought of domestically (and

elsewhere) as having the ‘highest’, most refined culture in Indonesia. All but one of

Indonesia’s presidents have come from Java and the rest of Indonesia often feels in

the shadow of Java’s cultural and political dominance. The Riau Islands have been

considered peripheral in the state’s construction of Indonesia and are officially

categorized as ‘Outer Islands II,’ the most remote category3. The province of Riau

Islands (Propinsi Kepulauan Riau, or Kepri) has approximately 1 million residents, an

extremely small number when compared with the tens of millions found in some of

the provinces in the ‘Inner Islands’ such as West Java, Central Java, and Bali.

Pulau Penyengat is located a short boat ride off the west coast of Bintan (see

Figure 1.2). After the Portuguese conquered Melaka in 1511, the Melaka sultanate

moved first to Johor, and then to the islands of Riau, which were considered a

strategic location for sea trade and easily protected. The Sultan had a fortified base, a

palace, and places of worship on Pulau Penyengat. When the Dutch annexed the area

in 1911, the Sultan ordered most of the structures to be destroyed rather than see them

fall into colonial hands. The Sultan and his family then fled to Singapore in 1911

where he lived until his death in 1930.

3 There are three official geographical categories dividing Indonesia, largely based on socially constructed notions of centrality. The first is the ‘Inner Islands’, consisting of Java, Bali, and parts of Sumatra bordering Java, the most highly populated areas of the country. The category ‘Outer Islands I’ consists of islands considered by the state to be less central to the political core yet still somewhat part of national politics with relatively high populations. The category ‘Outer Islands II’ consists of islands with extremely low populations, located a great distance from Jakarta, and of peripheral importance to the economic or political operations of the state. This system of categorization stems from how the Dutch organized the Indies in the later stages of colonization, based upon the economic value, productivity and centrality of the land. 14

Imagined by both the Malaysian and Indonesian states as a hearth of Malay

culture and considered the homeland of Bahasa Indonesia, Pulau Penyengat was

listed as a National Heritage Site in the 1980s after which it began to receive attention and a trickle of funds from the federal government to develop the remnants of the sultanate into a tourist attraction. Currently, there is a small but steady tourist industry

comprised of Malaysians and primarily local tourists, particularly workers from

across Indonesia employed in factories in Batam who make day trips on their days off

to various local tourist sites. On occasion, people staying in the high-end resorts in

north Bintan take a guided tour of Bintan Island that includes a short trip to Pulau

Penyengat and local authorities are keen to expand this market. The average tourist

visits Pulau Penyengat for just an hour or so and spends little. Visitors pay about

20,000 rupiah (about $4 SGD) for an autorickshaw tour of the island and perhaps buy

a bottle of water or cup of tea. While residents and state officials see tourism potential

in the island, there is uncertainty as to how tourism can economically benefit the

islanders and local state authorities.

The entire population of Pulau Penyengat is just over 2,000 residents living in

several villages scattered around the periphery of the island. Inhabiting a small island

just two kilometres long with unfertile soil typical to Riau, villagers have traditionally

been involved primarily in the fishing industry. A small handful work as guides,

rickshaw drivers, or operate pompong, small passenger boats to and from Tanjung

Pinang. An increasing number of residents work as civil servants or school teachers either on Pulau Penyengat or in Tanjung Pinang.

Until recently, the ethnic composition of Pulau Penyengat’s residents has been a mix of Malay, Bugis, Arab, Chinese, Indian and others, some of whom had intermarried over several generations and some of whom claimed a more ‘pure’ ethnic 15

heritage. The state’s push in recent years to develop Pulau Penyengat as both a Malay cultural hub and as a tourist destination has influenced the ethnic composition on the island. In casting Pulau Penyengat as a homeland for Malays and in tandem with an

agenda of modernization, the state has relocated orang laut, or sea nomads, to remote

villages in the Riau Islands. Ethnically Chinese residents have been given incentives

to move to a Chinese-dominated village nearby. The majority of the remaining

residents self-identify as Malay, a complex and flexible identity that is based on

religion (Islam), language and culture rather than on ethnicity (Barnard 2004). The

Indonesian state, along with influences from the broader Dunia Melayu [Malay

World], has largely succeeded in constructing ethnicity on Pulau Penyengat in the homogeneous image of how it imagines a Malay homeland to be.

Figure 1.3 - Pulau Penyengat

16

Figure 1.4 - Main jetty on Pulau Penyengat with the historical mosque (upper right)

Figure 1.5 - A stretch of village between the two jetties

While seemingly remote, Pulau Penyengat has felt the impact of state efforts to ‘nationalize’ the landscape at the village level and to encourage the performance of national identity. Due to Pulau Penyengat’s location in a border region, its status has shifted from being almost off the state’s radar to being a key national frontier. While the Riau Islands are still officially categorized as ‘Outer Islands II’, the recent development of a booming manufacturing industry on Batam Island, Riau’s key role 17

in the Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore Growth Triangle (IMS-GT)4, and the lucrative

oil industry in Natuna have all served to invite an increasing amount of state

intervention. While there has been much discussion about whether the IMS-GT has

contributed to a ‘borderless’ condition (Parsonage 1992; Ohmae 1994; Macleod and

McGee 1996; Gill 1997; Peachey, Perry, and Grundy-Warr 1997; Naidu 1998; Chang

2001) or whether the IMS-GT actually reinforces national boundaries for residents of

the Riau Islands (Grundy-Warr, Peachey, and Perry 1999; Debrah, McGovern, and

Budwar 2000), this thesis does not attempt to analyze the degree to which Riau is or is

not moving towards a state of borderlessness. It accepts that the political reality of the border is inescapable and that the process of nationalization, though often influenced by outside events to varying degrees, continues to be significant despite regional and global economic relationships. Since the fall of Suharto and the implementation of decentralization policies, in many ways Riau Islands has been the focus of more state attention than it received prior to 1998. For these reasons, Pulau Penyengat is an instructive example of how shifting national policies affect ordinary citizens’ lives in terms of what they do and the spaces they inhabit.

As will be explored in this thesis, national landscapes at the village level reflect national developments in Jakarta. Therefore, in discussing the process of nationalization in Pulau Penyengat I will frequently refer to policies and philosophies devised and constructed first in Jakarta as national showpieces. Even before

Independence, Jakarta was considered by Indonesian nationalists to be the capital city

of the Republic. During the Indonesian Revolution (1945-49), the capital shifted

temporarily to the central Javanese city of Yogyakarta but was moved back to Jakarta

in 1949 immediately after the Dutch formally surrendered. As the national capital in a

4 See Figure 1.2 – Singapore, Johor and Batam form the three corners of the Growth Triangle 18

highly centralized system of government, Jakarta was, and continues to be, the focus of much attention in the nation-building process. As with most capital cities, it is the site for national imaginings, the showpiece of the nation, and the place for pedagogical monuments intended to instruct the general populace about the nation’s

values and ideology. It was intended as a beacon of modernity and the primary place

for leaders to show off their aspirations for Indonesia and to legitimize their rule to

the populace. The creation of a new set of national iconography, or ‘imaging’ the

nation, was an important process in the struggle for internal legitimacy. The years

following Independence can be characterized by an intense period of national

construction in the form of monuments, federal buildings, and urban design. Sukarno,

who once boasted in his later days as president about being a ‘megalomaniac

architect’ (Leclerc 1993: 54), found expression for the new nation in International

Modernism with the ultimate goal of making Jakarta on par with the great

metropolises of the world. This program of modernization was advanced not simply

to display Indonesia’s potential for modernization and internationalism but can be

viewed as stages intended to encourage a set of ‘modern’ behaviours in citizens.

While Suharto was also focused on monuments and architecture as a way to express

national ambitions, he found expression in a style that attempted to connect with

indigenous design traditions and encouraged a corresponding set of behaviours in the

citizenry.

1.4 Thesis structure Having set the thesis in a broader context of geography and Indonesian

studies, laid out the rationale and contribution of the research, and presented my key

questions and objectives in this chapter, Chapter Two, Power, Performance and

Identity, provides a critical review of several strands of literature organized into four 19

sections. First, I briefly examine how geographers have studied ideology and power relations in landscape. Second, I critically review how performance has been used as an analytical tool. I examine its origins and appeal, how geographers have employed varied interpretations of performance and performativity, some of the challenges and limitations of using performance and performativity in analysis and end the section with a discussion as to how performance can fruitfully be reformulated. Third, I examine various scholars’ approach to power in an Indonesian context and critique the domination / resistance binary that pervades much research on the (particularly

New Order) Indonesian state. Foucault’s concept of governmentality is discussed as a key way in which power can be understood in the context of performances of national identity. Fourth, I examine the literature on nationalism in Indonesia since

Independence, ending with a discussion of some of the neglected perspectives in the literature.

Chapter Three lays out the methodology that has guided this research. I outline the informational requirements needed to address my research objectives then discuss the particularities of my research context, how I went about gaining access to the community and explain my rationale for selecting interviewees. I examine how an analysis of both my positionality and personality helped me craft my methodology and affected my interactions in the field. The chapter then details the qualitative methods I adopted.

In Chapter Four, Colonial Influences on Indonesian National Identity, I examine how and to what extent the groundwork for Indonesian identity was established during the Dutch and Japanese colonial periods. This information is drawn from published sources as well as from the memories of villagers in Pulau Penyengat.

This chapter demonstrates that a large number of the Indonesian nation’s 20

characteristics were developed by colonizers, often as a way to ideologically control

the colonized. I also examine how aspects of Dutch and Japanese colonial ideology have been borrowed in the crafting of the Republican administration’s strategies of nationalization.

Chapters Five, Six, and Seven are empirical chapters that each examine a realm of life in Pulau Penyengat that has featured significantly in the state’s strategies of nationalization. Each conceptual category is closely linked to citizens’ performances of national identity: work, learn, and play. The chapters are arranged in a progression from the most exclusive of places to the most inclusive. While Chapters

Five and Six examine aspects of citizens’ lives in which they are conscious of performing an official national protocol, Chapters Seven examines aspects of citizens’ lives that tend to be less consciously understood by citizens as serving the state’s

ideological purposes. Each of the empirical chapters explores how citizens are

expected and encouraged to perform a particular identity in various aspects of their

lives and at various times. As citizens are not required to perform in the same ways all

the time, I explore how these performances are place-specific.

Several common threads run through these landscapes. First is the interplay

between the village level and Jakarta. Second is the understanding that the process of

nationalization is ‘fractally’ organized, in other words developments at the village

level are intended as scaled-down, miniature versions of those found in Jakarta. Third

is the slippage that occurs between Jakarta and the village—with a radical change in

scale, context and location comes a host of unintended reinterpretations and

contestations. Fourth, being a village study, there is an implicit focus on the day-to-

day rather than the spectacular. Finally, through each empirical chapter the body

emerges as a key site upon which the state inscribes and legitimizes its ideology. 21

Chapter Five, The Nation at Work, examines how (certain) citizens are

encouraged to perform national identity in the context of the workplace. I begin by

reviewing the literature that links work and identity and then provide an overview of

pre- and post-Independence work to demonstrate continuities and changes in

workplace performances. I then explore how particular workplaces have been used to

propagate and enforce official national identity. Through an investigation of civil

servants, non-state workers and ‘volunteers’ on Pulau Penyengat, I illustrate how

workplace performances of national identity are uneven across the population by

looking specifically at workplace uniforms, workplace national rituals, and workplace

organizational hierarchies. I examine for whom these standardized national work

performances are mandatory and for whom they are not. This chapter also examines

how employees ignore or assign alternate meanings to mandatory performances of

national identity. Furthermore, it considers how certain groups of non-state workers

have enthusiastically imitated versions of state spaces and performance for a range of

purposes.

Chapter Six, Educating the Nation, examines how, since Independence,

performance has played a key role in propagating official versions of national identity

in the context of education. For many people on Pulau Penyengat, school is the only

time in their lives that they are asked to participate in official national rituals, making

education a formative interaction with the nation. In this chapter, I review how

scholars have examined the connections between education and nation-building. After

providing a brief overview of pre-Independence education, I then examine how

education has changed since Independence and the regular national ritual

performances that are coordinated in places of learning across the country. Through an in-depth investigation of an elementary school on Pulau Penyengat, I analyze how 22

nation-building is carried out through the bodies and actions of school children and investigate ways in which national identity is inculcated in students through various performances, including school uniforms, morning exercises, the weekly flag ceremony, and ‘ethnic’ education.

Chapter Seven, The Nation at Play, explores how the state has extended its agenda of nationalization to the recreational activities of its populace. Since

Independence, the state has introduced pastimes that were ideally intended to contribute to the overall development and strength of the nation by ‘improving’ the quality of citizenry by, for example, teaching discipline, ‘modernity’, and culture, and by strengthening their bodies. This chapter explores two ways in which national identity has been, and continues to be, performed through state recreational strategies since Independence, namely through sports and performing arts. First, I will examine national sports programs as key recreational areas in which citizens are frequently encouraged to perform national identity. I will examine how various waves of state- built sports infrastructure on Pulau Penyengat have reflected national sports development in Jakarta, shifting from a European-derived fitness culture to include local, ethnicized sports intended to reflect regional ethno-cultural identities. I examine the ways in which the national sport program is maintained, in part by educators at the village level who are sent for training by fitness instructors at the national level in order to effectively synchronize fitness programs across Indonesia. Second, I examine the emergence of state-driven performing arts on Pulau Penyengat, also a key way in which citizens are encouraged to actively perform a version of national identity in their free time with the use of state-funded facilities. While these performing arts programs in the village are just as much a part of official notions of national identity as more formally regulated performances, they are understood by villagers as being 23

more voluntary and enjoyable than those in spaces of work and learning. In the

context of the recreational pursuits of sports and performing arts, it is more relevant to

examine participation, non-participation and local adaptation rather than framing the

analysis in terms of resistance.

This thesis concludes with Chapter Eight, Conclusion, in which I review how

each chapter addresses the research questions and has contributed to the existing literature theoretically and empirically. I then provide an overview of the key

contributions and findings of the thesis before offering several directions for future

research.

24

Chapter 2 – Power, Performance, and Identity in Indonesia

2.1 Introduction This chapter seeks to situate my research within existing literatures on landscape, performance, and nationalism and power in Indonesia. Through discussion of these often overlapping areas, I will provide background on the relevant literature and a theoretical justification for my empirical research. In selecting and reviewing the literature, three areas of inquiry emerged that directly link to my thesis objectives:

1. How does a powerful entity such as the Indonesian state make its presence felt across the archipelago, across language groups, across a range of scales, and to a largely illiterate or semi-literate populace? What role does performance play in the formation, dissemination, and enforcement of official national identity in postcolonial

Indonesia? How does the national landscape function as a cultural practice? What strategies does the state employ to encourage citizens to behave as ‘Indonesians’?

2. How have the state’s strategies changed over the course of the Old and New

Orders and into the present? What continuities are there?

3. How have citizens responded to state efforts? How has the state’s vision of

‘Indonesia’ been understood, accepted, resisted and reinterpreted by the citizenry?

How have responses varied depending on the scale and location? How have citizens developed their own sense of national identity independent of, or in spite of, state efforts?

I am interested in examining these questions specifically through an analysis of landscape and performance and have sought out literature that asks similar questions about national identity, power relations between citizens and the state, and ideology in the form of landscape and performance. In this chapter I provide a critical 25

review of several overlapping strands of literature organized into four sections. The

first set of literature broadly relates to how ideology, values and power are expressed

through and embedded in landscape. I outline some of the approaches cultural

geographers and others have taken and examine existing literature related to

landscape in an Indonesian context. Second, I critically review how performance and

performativity have been used as analytical tools, with particular focus on the work of

geographers. I examine the origins and appeal of the concepts, how geographers have employed varied interpretations of performance and performativity, some of the challenges and limitations of using performance and performativity in analysis, and

end the section with a discussion about how performance can fruitfully be reformulated. Third, I examine various scholars’ approaches to power in an

Indonesian context and critique the domination / resistance binary that pervades much research on the (particularly New Order) Indonesian state. I then provide a brief overview of the main ways in which power has been theorized in the literature on

Indonesian politics and society. Foucault’s concept of governmentality is discussed as

a key way in which power can be understood in the context of performances of

national identity. Fourth, I examine how scholars have approached the study of

Indonesian nationalism.

2.2 Ideology and power relations in landscape Many scholars have observed that power, identity, ideology, and values are

expressed through landscape (Zukin 1991; Baker and Biger 1992; Daniels 1993;

Mitchell 1994; Johnson 1995; Schein 1997; Mitchell 2000; Hénaff and Strong 2001;

Kong and Yeoh 2003; Bunnell 2004). Landscape has been recognized as playing a

key role in the construction and contestation of national identity. Scholars emphasize

that ‘landscape’ is a cultural, social and political construct which ‘masks the artifice 26

and ideological nature of its form and content, making what is patently cultural appear to be as natural as possible’ (Kong and Yeoh 2003: 14-15; see also Barrell 1980;

Duncan and Duncan 1988; Duncan 1990; Mitchell 1994). As a technology of control, states deploy landscape as a strategy of power to ‘incorporate, categorize, discipline, control and reform’ their citizens (King 1990: 9). Cultural geographers have worked to decode messages embedded in landscape to show that ideology and power leading to control and surveillance are very much in operation (see for example, Hopkins

1990; Goss 1993; Jackson 1998). The dominant group (such as the state, males, heterosexuals, particular races) expresses and maintains power through the creation,

‘control and manipulation of landscapes and the practises of everyday life’

(Winchester, Kong, and Dunn 2003: 67).

Ways in which landscape both reflects and legitimizes ideology has been examined in the context of various social identities. Feminist and queer geographers have examined ways in which the dominant ideology is embedded in landscape and how places and spaces are deliberately gendered and sexed for the purpose of exclusion and inclusion and to legitimize the heterosexual ‘norm’ (see Greed 1992;

Monk 1992; Winchester 1992; Bell et al. 1994; Bell and Valentine 1995; McDowell

1999; Podmore 2001; Bondi and Rose 2003; Little and Panelli 2003; Doan 2007;

Oswin 2008; Visser 2008). Scholars have also looked at the body as a landscape of power, paying particular attention to clothes and adornment as strategies used to legitimize the ideology of the dominant group (McDowell and Court 1994; Nash

1996; Nast and Pile 1998; Dwyer 1999; Longhurst 2000; Zelinsky 2004; Longhurst

2005b, 2005a; Mohammad 2005). Others have examined how the state has used landscape as a hegemonic tool to naturalize and legitimize its power in the construction and maintenance of public space and the employment of particular urban 27

design principles (see King 1976; Kowinski 1985; Cosgrove 1988; Ley and Olds

1988; Agnew and Duncan 1989; Chua 1991; Zukin 1991; Hershkovitz 1993;

MacDonald 1995; Yiftachel et al. 2001; Cuthbert 2003; Staeheli and Mitchell 2006).

The inscription of class on landscape has been explored in the context of how the elite

have sought to establish cultural legitimacy through architectural manifestations of

their power and desired sophistication (Domosh 1989; King 1996; Bunnell 1999,

2004). These studies all examine how landscape is used by powerful groups to

legitimize their dominance and present uneven power relations as the natural order.

Cultural geographers have long considered landscape a way of seeing,

structuring and giving meaning to the world and have focused on the symbolic

qualities of landscape and how these qualities produce and perpetuate social meaning.

Since the early 1980s, more interpretive methodological approaches stemming from

linguistics and semiotics have replaced older descriptive approaches of analyzing

landscape. In The City as Text: the Politics of Landscape Interpretation in the

Kandyan Kingdom (1990), James Duncan applies post-structural ideas drawn from

literary theory to provide a methodology for interpreting landscapes as ‘text’ to be

read or interpreted as one would a written document. He understands landscape as a

signifying system embodying cultural practices and a cultural production, integral to

the reproduction and contestation of political power. Like written texts, images

(including landscape) must be understood as complex, with powers to deceive and

naturalize their constructedness. Whatever the medium, any representation is imbued

with meaning mediated by social considerations. The metaphor of landscape as ‘texts’

has been extended to include linguistic analogies such as the grammar, similes and

syntax to attempt to understand general rules of landscape. 28

In the last decade or so, some scholars have shifted to understanding landscape

as a process. W. J. T. Mitchell (1994: 1) suggests changing ‘landscape’ from a noun

to a verb in order to think of landscape ‘not as an object to be seen or a text to be read,

but as a process by which social and subjective identities are formed’. Don Mitchell

(2000; 2003) and others (see Corner 1999; Shurmer-Smith 2002) go beyond enquiring

what landscape ‘is’ or ‘means’ by asking what landscape does and how it functions as a cultural practice.

A number of scholars from various disciplines have studied the power relations and ideology embedded in the landscape in an Indonesian context (Nas

1992; Leclerc 1993; MacDonald 1995; Errington 1998; Cairns 2005). Their main contributions include the identification and documentation of national landscapes and monuments and explanations of their symbolic meaning. However, like Duncan

(1990) and others, their main concern is with what the landscape represents rather than what the landscape does. Their work tends to focus largely on the same spectacular state expressions of national identity located almost exclusively in and around Jakarta: the national monument (MONAS), national public statuary, Taman

Mini Indonesia Raya5 (‘Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature Park’, the national theme

park), and the international section of the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. Also

focusing exclusively on Jakarta, Cairns (2005) adopts Francis Bacon’s terminology

‘arts of transmission’ to explain the urban practices through which ideas are articulated, distributed, and passed on. Bacon argues that what we know depends upon the transmission of knowledge through various mediums, or ‘materialities of communication’. Cairns extends Bacon’s inventory of knowledge transmitters beyond

printed material, sound and film to include architecture and urban form in an approach

5 See page 112 for a fuller discussion. 29

that begins to examine what the landscape does. Abidin Kusno (2000) provides a rich look into the political history of architecture and urbanism in Jakarta and, going beyond the symbolism and meaning behind national monuments found in Nas (1992) and Leclerc’s (1993) work, seeks to examine how urban space plays a constitutive role in creating national subjects.

While landscape, monuments and urban form are understood as tools of communication for the state, there is little exploration into how citizens accept, reject, reinterpret or ignore these efforts or how citizens in turn can constitute the landscape.

Also, attention is paid neither to landscapes at the provincial or village level nor to the everyday, unspectacular ‘nationalized’ spaces. There is a lack of dynamism to these studies accentuated by a lack of exploration into what people do in relation to the design and underlying power relations in landscape. One outstanding example in which the landscape is seen to affect the bodily performance of visitors can be found in anthropologist Shelly Errington’s (1998: 215) discussion of the Indonesia Museum in Taman Mini:

…the grand entrance portal to the building was ostentatiously locked with a large chain and lock – it is used only for ceremonies, said a nearby guard – making it necessary to stoop down to enter through a small, low door to the side of the main entrance. This entrance device converts ordinary visitors into humble penitents, by obliging them to bow towards the structure upon the act of entering. In contrast to the large locked entrance portal, this diminutive doorway is, in effect, the servants’ entrance to the sacred space.

This excerpt nicely conveys how landscape and performance intersect: the landscape regulates the performance, and the performance in turn constitutes the landscape.

While cultural geographers in recent years have explored the more performative aspects of landscape and how landscape is made meaningful by human performance, there is a significant gap in the literature which reveals the need for an in-depth 30

empirical study relating to landscape and the performance of Indonesian national identity.

2.3 Performance and Performativity ...we can better understand cultural identity not by studying the artifacts of museums or libraries, but through observing emergent performances. Thus, if we desire to understand more about human and cultural identity, we must turn to the study of human action. (Fine and Speer 1992, Performance, Culture, Identity)

During the past decade, scholars in the social sciences and humanities have turned from examining text, language, and representation towards a scrutiny of performance and practices. This shift can be observed in cultural geography in the recent increase in the number of papers published and conferences held that attempt to understand and utilize performance and performativity as conceptual frames for the analysis of a variety of issues. Performance and performativity are seen as important conceptual tools with which to ‘denaturalize taken-for-granted social practices’ and, particularly, to displace the heteronormativity of gender and sex (Butler 1990). It is also seen as increasingly important for understanding how dominant ideology and values are enacted and maintained and how space is made meaningful through human performance. Broadly, ‘performance’ can be defined as what ‘individual subjects do, say, [and] ‘act-out”’ and ‘performativity’ is defined as ‘the repeated actions which perpetuate and/or destabilize discourse’ (Gregson and Rose 2000: 434).

This section is divided into four parts. First, I examine the origins and appeal of performance and performativity as analytical concepts. I then provide an overview of the ways in which performance has been used by geographers. This will be followed by an outline of some of the challenges and limitations in performative approaches and finally, an explication of how they may be reconceptualized for my own purposes. 31

2.3.1 Origins and appeal The study of performance and performativity emerged from the disciplines of

philosophy, sociology, linguistics, anthropology, and literary, theatre and cultural

studies. Performance has been theorized in different ways that depend on particular,

contrasting understandings of agency, subjectivity, and power.

In the 1950s, the sociologist Erving Goffman pioneered the study of performance by using metaphors derived from drama and theatre to view social interaction as a series of performances with actors, scripts, sets and audience members

who interpret actions, and in turn enact these performances themselves (Goffman

1959). The anthropologist Victor Turner (1974) was also a key figure to employ

dramaturgical metaphors to understand social relations. In his work he developed the

idea that the performance of rituals function as both cultural agent and social process.

Performance and performativity have since been employed as analytical tools to

‘extraordinary cross-purposes’ (Parker and Sedgewick 1995: 1) by theorists in a range

of disciplines. Several key theorists and their approaches to performance and

performativity will be examined in this section, namely, Goffman; Irigaray, a feminist

and philosopher; Riviere, a psychoanalyst; and Butler, a queer theorist.

Performance and performativity respond to the desire to go beyond the

analysis of texts and visual presentation, which, while useful, have been criticized as

reflecting an inaccurately static world. Thus, part of the appeal of ‘performance’ lies

in its connotations of dynamism, movement, and the temporal, the actual doing.

Performance and performativity also offer possibilities for thinking about social

identities as acted out, as performed, as constructed in and through social action rather

than existing anterior to social processes.

Goffman was one of the more prolific scholars to explore the human

performance of various identities. Goffman (1959) cites a passage from William 32

Sansom’s (1956) novel A Contest of Ladies that exemplifies the kinds of everyday performances in which we all engage. It is worth quoting this passage at length as it effectively conveys Goffman’s contention that the constructed, the theatrical, contextual, and nonverbal kinds of daily communication are both intentional and unintentional. This passage describes the performance of Preedy, an Englishman on vacation in coastal Spain for the first time:

But in any case he took care to avoid catching anyone’s eye. First of all, he had to make it clear to those potential companions of his holiday that they were of no concern to him whatsoever. He stared through them, round them, over them – eyes lost in space. The beach might have been empty. If by chance a ball was thrown his way, he looked surprised; then let a smile of amusement lighten his face (Kindly Preedy), looked round dazed to see that there were people on the beach, tossed it back with a smile to himself and not a smile at the people, and then resumed carelessly his nonchalant survey of space. But it was time to institute a little parade, the parade of the Ideal Preedy. By devious handlings he gave any who wanted to look a chance to see the title of his book – a Spanish translation of Homer, classic thus, but not daring, cosmopolitan too – and then gathered together his beach-wrap and bag into a neat sand-resistant pile (Methodical and Sensible Preedy), rose slowly to stretch at ease his huge frame (Big-Cat Preedy), and tossed aside his sandals (Carefree Preedy, after all). The marriage of Preedy and the sea! There were alternative rituals. The first involved the stroll that turns into a run and a dive straight into the water, thereafter smoothing into a strong splashless crawl towards the horizon. But of course not really to the horizon. Quite suddenly he would turn on to his back and thrash great white splashes with his legs, somehow thus showing that he could have swum further had he wanted to, and then would stand up a quarter out of the water for all to see who it was. The alternative course was simpler, it avoided the cold-water shock and it avoided the risk of appearing too high-spirited. The point was to appear to be so used to the sea, the Mediterranean, and this particular beach, that one might as well be in the sea as out of it. It involved a slow stroll down and into the edge of the water – not even noticing his toes were wet, land and water all the same to him! – with his eyes up at the sky gravely surveying portents, invisible to others, of the weather (Local Fisherman Preedy).

As the primary scholar who theorized an intentional, knowing, active, prior subject, Goffman’s work is helpful in understanding aspects of human activity that require agency and intentionality. He sees human behaviour as a ‘system of theatrical performances … enacted by intentional agents in a given social context’ (Hyndman 33

and de Alwis 2005: 38). The individual can be understood as a manipulative, strategic

self who reveals only what he/she desires to be seen. Particular performances are enacted in public spaces, which can be halted in private. Hyndman and de Alwis

(2005) observe that while there are obvious limitations to Goffman’s separation of

public and private space, his metaphor is useful in understanding practices adopted by

certain people in certain places. Hyndman and de Alwis contend that people actively

construct their identities in certain contexts to avoid drawing attention to themselves

and to reduce harassment and / or alienation, and for personal gain. In line with

Goffman (1959), they argue that the strategic presentation of self in everyday life can

be key to one’s survival and advancement. Jeganathan (1998: 98-100) has described

such strategic presentations of self as ‘tactics of anticipation’. To live then as an

Indonesian, as a woman, or as any other social identity requires a ‘repertoire of

tactics’ or performances that can be deployed depending on the context.

It is important to emphasize that Goffman concentrates on revealing the day-

to-day performances in which we all perpetually engage with varying degrees of

conscious intent. As can be seen from the above passage, Goffman attributes a large

degree of agency to the subject and their awareness of an audience, which in turn

informs the type of performance that is put on. While Goffman understands

performance as being carried out by an active, prior and conscious self, subjects are

not completely free agents who perform as they please. Instead, they perform

identities that are shaped by hegemonic discourses. According to this formulation,

humans have agency within the confines of broadly scripted social roles.

In contrast, in their work on the feminine identity of women, Joan Riviere

(1986) and Luce Irigaray (1985) both suggest that femininity is a mask worn at all

times in all social situations. They claim that there is no difference between the 34

woman and the mask and that there is no active, conscious human agent behind the

mask of femininity. This point is also made by the famous cross-dressing Indonesian

dancer, Didik (Mrázek, 2005), who dons a physical mask for many of his

performances and believes that even when his physical mask is removed, a metaphorical mask remains. Like Irigaray and Riviere, Didik argues that no single, stable self exists and that there is no separation between the mask and the performer.

One’s face, according to Didik, is just another mask, no different from his material masks. Didik and Irigaray both argue that we wear multiple masks, or identities, which are dependent on the social situation. These views question the existence of a fixed individual identity. As Didik suggests, ‘these mask-like identities are not superficial disguises, but the real thing’ (Mrázek, 2005: 7).

Judith Butler sparked widespread interest in performance with her book,

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) in which she introduced her theory of performativity. In Gender Trouble, she provides a way to think of gender identities as socially constructed, arguing that the dominant discourses of gender and sexuality are endlessly perpetuated through constant repetition. Butler is primarily concerned with sexuality, gender, and heteronormativity, exploring how social roles are not predetermined but are a complex series of roles enacted to maintain power structures. Her concept of performativity

recognizes that “the subject” is constituted through matrices of power/discourse, matrices that are continually reproduced through processes of resignification, or repetition of hegemonic gendered (racialized, sexualized) discourses’ (Nelson 1999: 337).

In Gender Trouble (1990) Butler argues against the notion of a self that is independent of power/discourse matrices.

As feminist theorists developed the concept of performance to understand how gender identities are constructed and actively maintained, the body became a key 35

scale at which to observe this process. This scale can be seen as crucial in the analysis of performances of national identity, which often comes into being through the body of the citizen. In other words, the state often acts as a regulator and reproducer of national identities by articulating ideology through the bodies of its citizens.

Butler contends that there is no authentic, inherent man or woman that precedes culture, society, and language, arguing that gender identity is a social performance and not a biological reality. While others have made similar observations about the constructedness of identities, by using the concept of ‘performance’, she emphasizes the repetition necessary to maintain identities. By endlessly referencing the conventions and ideologies of the social world around us, we individually enact our reality by internalizing and then performing it with our bodies. However, that

‘reality’ nonetheless remains a social construction and by citing it, we perpetuate the social constructedness of our world. Our social reality is a naturalized construction, an imitation with no original (Butler 1990). Butler argues that what we assume to be

‘natural’ about our gender identity is almost non-existent, and that gender, rather than being a binary division based on biological difference, is instead a persistent impersonation that passes as real. Being a woman, for example, is not a ‘natural fact but a cultural performance [in which] “naturalness” [is] constituted through discursively constrained performative acts that produce the body through and within the categories of sex’ (Butler 1990: 30). In other words, the process of doing gender or sexuality involves repetition (resignification through performance) and that identity is something repeatedly performed and therefore naturalized rather than something inherent. Following this logic, the way that dominant discourses are displaced or that change occurs is through accidental and unintentional ‘slippages’ in the process of repetition (Butler, 1990: 30). 36

In Butler’s theorization of ‘performance’ she narrowly confines her work to

gender performances, leaving others to speculate as to how her theories might address

more consciously-performed identities, such as those relating to employment or

nationality6. Butler’s assumption of how social change occurs is similarly rigid,

making it difficult to apply her work to scenarios that involve active, conscious

agents. Even Butler’s insistence that gender and sexuality are subconsciously

performed is narrowly explained. For example, while females may not be aware of

acting ‘female’, they are however aware at times that femininity is a kind of act, as

seen in the common expression ‘to put on one’s face’ to refer to a woman applying

her make-up. This expression clearly communicates a level of consciousness in

gender performance that is unaccounted for in Butler’s theorization. The mask of

femininity in such a scenario is understood to some degree by the actor to be a

performance. Butler specifically points to drag balls as an example that makes

‘explicit the way in which all gender and sexual identifications are ritually performed

in daily life’ (Nelson 1999: 339). By parodying dominant norms, drag balls expose

the fact that heterosexuality is always a performance, and attempt to ‘idealize its own

idealizations’. The aim of this fabrication is the production of a coherent identity,

bounded and constituted by the political forces that impose a compulsory

heterosexuality.

The key ideas in Butler’s understanding of performance are the social

construction of identities, the sustaining of these identities through repeated

‘performances’, the occurrence of change in the form of unintentional ‘slippages’, and

the absence of an active, prior subject. Employing Butler’s theories usefully requires a

rigorous critique and reworking of performativity and an understanding of the

6 While she does not make it explicit, it is possible that she would not deny that there are some identities that are consciously performed and, by extension, intentional. This, however, is not elaborated in Butler’s writing. 37

shortcomings of the concept. According to Nelson (1999), scholars such as Bell et al.

(1994) and McDowell and Court (1994) falsely read intentionality into Butler’s

performativity. According to Butler, ‘to posit a subject that is aware or critical of

dominant discourse (one that she assumes is then ‘outside’ of it) capitulates to the

autonomous masterful subject of liberal thought’ (Nelson 1999: 343). In other words,

since we are all situated within multiple discourses, we can never assume to be

neutral, knowing subjects. Change can only be brought about through unintentional

slippages that occur through repeated performances of dominant identities.

While Butler focuses primarily on gender and sexual identities, her concept of identity as a social performance has recently been extended by human geographers and others to include identities relating to nationhood, race, culture and class (these will be elaborated upon in the next sub-section). However, as Nelson (1999: 343) points out, directly applying Butler’s notion of performance to geography is challenging as Butler provides ‘no handles for thinking about the spatial / temporal location’. Butler has set up a dichotomy between either a masterful Enlightenment subject or the subject as a site for subconscious, unintentional performances of dominant discourses. Lise Nelson (1999: 350) problematizes this dichotomy, arguing for an understanding of the self that is

both constituted by discursive processes and potentially aware of them, potentially able to actively appropriate, reject or reshape the subject position(s) offered by dominant discourse(s).

Borrowing from both Goffman and Butler, Nelson recognizes a more comprehensive version of the self that is more satisfying with regard to the performance of national identity. This will be more fully examined in sub-section 2.3.5, in which I provide my own conceptual reworking of performativity for the purpose of examining how national identity is performed. 38

2.3.2 Performance and performativity in geography Some geographers increasingly see potential in performance and

performativity as conceptual tools for a critical human geography, arguing that they

need to be thought about in relation to space: ‘space needs to be thought of as brought

into being through performances and as a performative articulation of power’

(Gregson and Rose 2000: 434). Human geographers view performativity as a way to

understand the constructedness of identity, social power relations, and the ways in

which these are spatially articulated. Performativity has been helpful in developing

theories about the ‘constructedness of identity, subjectivity, and agency’ (Gregson and

Rose, 2000: 434), particularly in relation to sexuality and gender. Since performativity cannot be viewed as a singular act but as a norm or set of norms that are naturalized

through repetition (Nash 2000), the theorizing of sexuality, gender and other identities

as performative ‘can transform static, pre-discursive notions of space and place’

(Nelson 1999: 335) and thus contribute to new understandings of place, space, identity, gender and sexuality. The notion of performance is ‘indeed crucial for a critical human geography concerned with understanding the construction of social identity, social difference, and social power relations, and the way space might articulate all of these’ (Gregson and Rose 2000: 434).

Similarly, recognizing a need to ‘make [geographies] alive’, Thrift and

Dewsbury (2000: 411) have suggested that the metaphor of performance offers

geography an alternative to more static representation-based approaches to place and

landscape. Thrift (2000b; 2000a; 2000c; Thrift and Dewsbury 2000; 2004) also sees performativity as a way for geography to renew and reinvigorate itself, something he feels geography urgently needs to do. His work on ‘nonrepresentational theory’ also highlights his desire for new and challenging directions for cultural geography that 39

turn ‘away from the analysis of texts, images and discourses, and towards

understanding the micro-geographies of habitual practices, departing from

deconstructing representations to explore the non-representational’ (Nash 2000: 656).

The concepts of performance and performativity are used by geographers in two separate and rarely overlapping ways. Scholars are generally divided into two schools: the ‘dance’ school, dominated by the concepts advanced by Nigel Thrift, and the ‘performed identity’ school, dominated by the writings of Judith Butler and

Erving Goffman. There is little dialogue between the schools, as can be seen by the list of references in papers dealing with performance, which tend to cite work produced exclusively by one or the other school but very rarely both. In his engagement with performativity, Thrift turns to the performing arts and to dance in particular as a ‘“concentrated” example of the expressive nature of embodiment’

(1997: 125). He approaches performativity through what he calls

‘nonrepresentational theory or the theory of practices’, an attempt to explore the realm of body practices which cannot be represented in texts, images and discourses.

However, as Nash (2000) points out, in favouring practices over words, Thrift relies on a division between thought and practice, which associates the apparent rationality of texts to masculinity and the apparent unknowability and instability to femininity

(Foster 1998). Furthermore, his use of dance is problematic as it treats dance as a natural, unmediated, authentic engagement with the world rather than as a cultural form, itself embedded in power relations. For the purpose of this thesis, Thrift’s

‘dance’ approach is less applicable so I will move on to discuss how the work of

Butler and Goffman has been used by cultural geographers.

If identity is constructed and maintained through discourse, performance, and everyday actions, it must be understood as being context-dependent, as different 40

performances occur in different locations. As Pamela Shurmer-Smith has argued

(2002), performance is spatial in that it takes place somewhere. Shurmer-Smith also

points out that there are spatial politics in every action: in aggressively pushing or

politely standing back in a shop; in considerately making oneself as small as possible

or comfortably spreading one’s legs in tourist class airplane seats; in covering one’s window in voile or displaying one’s life to the world. The place-specificity of performance has been studied by feminist and queer theorist geographers who argue that places are encoded with messages about who belongs, what behaviour is expected, and what other axes of social division are made concrete in space.

Goffman’s sense of anterior agents, his separation of performer and

performance, the sense of performances occupying particular pre-given kinds of

spaces, and his notion of a (constraining) script all recur in geographers’ discussions

of performance, even in writing that does not specifically cite his work. Nicky

Gregson and Gillian Rose (2000) form a consensus around Goffman’s view of

interaction as an engagement between individual(s) and audience(s), to whom

individuals perform and who, in turn, interpret their actions (like Preedy on the

beach). Although their respective works draw on Butler’s theory and vocabulary of

habitually repeated, performed identities, they ultimately support Goffman’s theory

that there exists an active, prior, consciously performing self.

Gregson and Rose (2000: 433) extend the scope of Butler’s work, arguing that

spaces also need to be viewed as performative and ‘more needs to be made of the

complexity and instability of performances and performed spaces’. Gregson and Rose

(2000) illustrate what they mean by the ‘performative qualities of space’ with

examples from their individual research projects on community arts workers and car-

boot sales, respectively. In their empirical study of car-boot sales, they argue that 41

while conventional spaces of exchange (high street, malls, and so on) and car-boot sales occupy different physical spaces, the spaces are linked through interrelational performance. For example, they observe that aspects of conventional spaces of exchange infiltrate car-boot sales in the form of pricing strategies, haggling decisions and the concept of the ‘bargain’. Likewise, the presence of car-boot sales on high street is seen in individuals who visit high street to price check against goods sold in car-boot sales. Rather than performances simply being located in space, the car-boot sale and high street can be understood as relational and articulated through performance. The main contribution of their paper is their attempt to ‘take Butler elsewhere’ through challenging existing work which assumes that performances take place on already existing locations, or ‘stages’ which preexist their performers. In contrast, Gregson and Rose argue that it is specific performances (such as a car-boot sale) which bring these spaces into being.

Phil Crang (1994) employs the metaphor of performance to illustrate how staff, management, and customers in a popular diner-style restaurant follow scripts governing speech, dress, and behaviour. Crang conceptualizes the dining room and open-concept kitchen as the ‘stage’ in which a particular set of performances are required, in contrast to what he refers to as the ‘backstage’ or ‘behind-the-scenes’ areas where employees can stop ‘performing’. Crang argues that the ‘audience’ also follows scripted roles. In these performances, the categories of ‘audience’ and

‘performer’ in Crang’s restaurant collapse and all involved become actors and audience simultaneously.

Crang’s use of performance as an analogy for the everyday activity of dining in a restaurant is a simple but useful example of how the concept of performance can aid in understanding intentional social behaviour. In this example, the theatre 42

metaphor helps to describe human action in relation to space in a way that

underscores the contextual nature of performance. Similarly, in their analysis of the

violent conflict in Sri Lanka, Jennifer Hyndman and Malathi de Alwis (2005)

examine how national identity is performed strategically as a survival mechanism in particular contexts. They observe that at checkpoints in Sri Lanka certain groups

‘actively construct their identities in ways that will reduce harassment and threats –

either perceived or real’ (Hyndman and de Alwis, 2005: 39). In this case, Tamils

strategically downplay and maintain ambiguity around their Tamil ethnicity/nation in

certain places.

Rather than exploring the more abstract, theoretical dimensions of

performance, in Landscape and Englishness David Matless (1998) examines the performance of Englishness and the space in which this identity is enacted. He effectively describes how a particular perception of a homogenous, timeless and stable rural Englishness is maintained through conscious7 performances of citizenship

such as dance, exercise, walking, hostelling, and map reading. Such specific

nationalistic ‘performances’ were encouraged by the state as part of campaigns to re-

build and strengthen the ‘British nation’ between the world wars and after WWII. By

partaking in officially-sanctioned activities, one could show support for England. His performances of Englishness rely upon an aware and conscious subject which

‘perform’ in context-specific ways. While neither Crang nor Matless explicitly refer

to Goffman, their respective research parallels points made in The Presentation of Self

in Everyday Life (1959).

7 The degree to which individuals are conscious they are performing is never clear and varies from person to person. What is more important is that the state promoted these activities by creating or designating the spaces in which they could occur. While many of these activities had been carried out prior to their official sanctioning as ‘national’ activities, the meaning of them changes once they are organized and encouraged by the state. 43

Several scholars follow Butler in seeking primarily to disrupt dominant understandings of gender and sexuality while attempting to spatialize Butler’s performativity (Bell et al 1994; McDowell and Court 1994; Gibson-Graham 1996;

Lewis and Pile 1996; Longhurst 2000). They examine how space is heteronormative and discourages performances of homosexuality, pregnancy, or other minority bodily behaviours. Longhurst (2000) also uses Butler’s concept of performativity in the context of a beauty pageant for pregnant women, in which heavily pregnant women parody a conventional beauty contest meant for young, single and therefore sexually available women. She claims that in so doing, these women confound societal expectations that the pregnant body should be hidden or disguised and that pregnancy and the sexuality of pregnant women is a private matter.

In her paper ‘Tricking the border guards: Performing race’, Mahtani (2002) adopts aspects of Butler’s performativity to explore the process of racialization, an aspect not examined in Butler’s model of performance. In her study of self-identified

‘mixed race’ women, Mahtani departs from Butler’s performativity in her understanding of subjects as critical and conscious of their racialized identities.

Mahtani examines ‘mixed race’ people through the lens of performativity in order to demonstrate that, like gender, racialized categories can also be understood as

‘regulatory fictions’ which are ‘actively performed and masqueraded’ (Mahtani 2002:

428). Like other scholars adopting Butler’s concept of performativity, however,

Mahtani assumes a conscious and strategic subject that purposefully performs in particular ways. Her interviewees intentionally disrupt racial stereotypes as a way of liberating themselves from them, an approach more in line with Goffman’s notion of performance than the ‘regulatory fiction’ put forth by Butler. 44

McDowell and Court’s (1994) paper ‘Performing work: Bodily representations

in merchant banks’ examines the scripting and performance of gendered identities in

merchant banks and how dominant identities are performed daily by workers. They

explore how the media deploys, and therefore reinforces, hegemonic identities of the

dominant group (white male professionals) which is then perpetuated by both male

and female employees. They observe that required performance of workers such as

office dress and behaviour is scripted and completely conscious. While citing Butler,

McDowell and Court argue that gender roles (e.g. the flirtatious, feminized stockbroker) are consciously chosen and performed for personal benefit, a stance that

is in fact more in line with Goffman’s conscious subject and separation of performer

and performance.

Bell et al. (1994) have employed Butler’s performativity in their analysis of queer urban space, highlighting the tensions which arise from the performed identities of ‘lipstick lesbians’ and ‘gay skinheads’. The ‘feminine’ appearance of ‘lipstick lesbians’ generates tension both among some members of the lesbian community and among the straight community who feel they are being deceptive about who they are.

The appearance of gay skinheads also causes tension among non-white gays who question whether gay skinheads support the racist philosophies of skinheads or are simply dressing like them. In this case, subversion is not always a result of ‘slippages’ inherent in citation, or the repeated referencing of prior actions. The subversion of heterosexual identity rests on the ‘active appropriation’ of straight space by gays and lesbians, or on the ability to ‘infiltrate’ it (Bell et al 1994: 32). These acts also suggest an agency that Butler’s theorization does not include.

Turner and Manderson (2007) employ the concepts of performance and

performativity to examine the microgeography of how law students are socialized into 45

the law profession through weekly informal ‘Coffee House’ gatherings. At these

gatherings, the students make a show of acting like lawyers in how they eat, drink,

dress and socialize, an act that was both polished and reinforced after repeated performances over time. Turner and Manderson argue that through repetitive performances at Coffee House, students are socialized into the law profession and learn to successfully behave like lawyers through unconsciously acting out dominant behaviour patterns expected of an aspiring lawyer.

In their study of women at Carnival in Rio, Lewis and Pile (1996) argue that participants consciously perform femininity, albeit within roles determined by masculinist regimes of power. They observe that the women in the parade are hired for their beauty and perform gender roles within artistic performances in the parade, in a complex, multi-layered set of performances. The performers consciously try to fit meet the beauty standards expected at Carnival through diet, exercise, and tanning, which Lewis and Pile (1996: 24) argue demonstrate that the women are ‘actively performing and masquerading femininity’. Furthermore, they note that lascivious embraces of males are met with detachment, suggesting that for a hired female performer, ‘her body is not her’, at least in the context of Carnival (Lewis and Pile,

1996: 36). Despite a level of strategic awareness in the women, ‘ideals of womanhood are imposed during the carnival’ (Lewis and Pile, 1996: 34) as well as other social values such as family morality, sexuality, and nationality. The performances of identities are consciously acted out within actual performances. Through ‘highly stylized performances’ at Carnival, the female body can be understood as performative: it is reproduced through the citation of identities that are familiar to both performers and audience. Lewis and Pile (1996) theorize the female body itself as a costume, a position that tacitly assumes that there is an independent subject 46

within the costume who is aware of the performance, an idea more in line with

Goffman’s theorizations of intentionality and agency than with Butler’s. However,

Butler’s performativity also emerges in their analysis through the citation and

repetition of dominant gender norms.

2.3.4 Challenges and limitations of performance and performativity Nelson (1999) calls for a more thoughtful and nuanced use of performativity,

arguing that it has been accepted enthusiastically but uncritically by geographers

when it warrants more intensive theorization about its potentials and limitations. She

argues that while an increasing number of geographers have been adopting the

vocabulary of performance, there has been a distinct lack of critique directed towards

the concept itself. Performativity, as theorized by Butler, provides ‘no space for

theorizing conscious reflexivity, negotiation or agency in the doing of identity’

(Nelson 1999: 331). Nelson’s (1999: 339) main critique of Butler’s theorization of

performativity is that it ‘forecloses inquiry into why and how particular identities

emerge, their effects in time and space, and the role of subjects in accommodating or

resisting dominant, fixed subject positions’.

Another critique of performance and performativity is the deeply theoretical

approach taken by many who use it, a reflection of criticism directed at cultural

geography more generally. Many have commented that cultural geography is not only

getting wordier but so deeply theoretical that only an exclusive and shrinking

academic clique is able to participate in the discourse. Marcus (2004:13) speaks for

many when he criticizes the cultural turn as being ‘indulgently theoretical’ while

Hamnett (2003: 1) claims that the rise of the post-modern has led geography into a

‘theoretical playground where its practitioners stimulate or entertain themselves and a handful of readers, but have in the process become increasingly detached from 47

contemporary social issues and debates’. The concept of performativity is considered by some to be one such playground, with many geographers employing an unnecessarily baffling style (Latham, 2003). Furthermore, geographers who engage the concept of performativity such as Thrift offer ‘more theoretical guidance for considering practices over representations rather than strategies for bringing them together’ (Nash, 2000: 661). In other words, Thrift offers theory then leaves it to others to figure out how it can be applied empirically. Such theorizations seem to discourage visual and textual forms, which poses problems if you are trying to study a geography in which the people are dead (Nash, 2000) or if ‘performers’ are not directly observable. The analysis of performance and performativity presents a problem in its emphasis on unintentional, day-to-day actions which makes it difficult to formulate a methodology, as will be discussed in Chapter Three. Nash (2000: 662) questions whether ‘precognitive, habitual, everyday practices within “non- representational theory”’ are in fact knowable and whether or not ‘the effort to understand and communicate is abandoned in favour of abstract theorizing of the nonrepresentable.’ If the preverbal and inexpressible are emphasized over textual and verbal sources, the position of those who are voiceless and marginalized is neither addressed nor improved and the approach is stripped of any political potential. Also, it is impossible to know many things about people’s behaviour and thoughts except through representations which are imperfect and subject to interpretation.

Thrift and Dewsbury (2000) recommend that performance should not be limited to the objects of academic study, but should also be deeply integrated into academic work itself. Citing the famous sociologist Howard Becker who presented his research as a play, they suggest conference presentations could be ‘enlivened’ if given as plays, dance or performance art. Tempting as it was to ‘enliven’ this literature 48

review by performing it as a piece of interpretive dance, I decided that conventional

text would more likely be understood.

While performativity is clearly an inspiring and dynamic concept, theorization

has outpaced empirical analysis and the gap seems to be getting wider. However, as

discussed, a welcome body of work has recently emerged which, to varying degrees, tests the theory in the ‘real’ world. As I have outlined, aspects of performativity are problematic and contribute to its inaccessibility, ambiguity, and perceived elitism

among some human geographers. Ideally, the growing interest in performativity will

be reflected in an increase in empirical work that will test, modify, and ultimately

strengthen the theory.

2.3.5 Reformulating performance: layering and intentionality With the exception of Lewis and Pile’s (1996) paper, there is an unaddressed

ambiguity in how geographers employ the concept of performance relating to the

degree of consciousness, agency, intentionality, and audience role, a grey area

between what we think intuitively as conscious ‘performance’ and day-to-day

naturalized actions. Rather than simply picking and choosing aspects of Butler and

Goffman’s work, it is more helpful to conceptualize their work as addressing

theoretically different aspects of social action that operate simultaneously at different

‘levels’. This multilayered understanding of performance frees us from the dichotomy

of performance being either intentional acts by aware subjects or unintentional acts

which are habitually repeated and recognizes a varying level of consciousness and

agency in performers.

A broader understanding of performance that encompasses aspects of existing

formulations and grounds theory in empirical work is key to moving forward. I would

agree with the theatre director and scholar Schechner (1988) in his claim that 49

‘performance is an inclusive term’ and not seek to draw boundaries between what is

and what is not performance. To Schechner, performing arts should be considered as

only one node on a continuum of performances which includes everything from

performances of everyday life such as greetings, displays of emotion, family scenes,

professional roles, and so on through to sports, parades, theatre, dance, ceremonies,

rites and other formal, organized performances. Although conceptualizing all

performances as being part of a continuum makes them potentially difficult to

analyze, it is inaccurate to imagine art performances and everyday performances as

mutually exclusive. Schechner (1988: xv) provides a useful way of bridging art

performances with everyday performance by considering art performances to be ‘an

illusion of an illusion and, as such, might be considered more “truthful”, more “real”

than ordinary experience’. In other words, staged performances can usefully reveal

values, identities and power structures that are more subtly disguised in everyday life.

Citing Aristotle’s opinion in his Poetics, he contends that ‘theater did not so much

reflect living as essentialize it, present paradigms of it’ (Schechner 1988: xix). In

examining performance in this thesis, I am not seeking to reveal what performance

‘really’ is but to use it as an analytical category for understanding the embodied,

performative side of nation-building.

While theorizing the self in contrasting ways, both the ‘Goffman’ and the

‘Butler’ conceptualizations of performance are embedded in a larger discourse that

focuses on the embodiment of identities. I suggest that these seemingly conflicting

conceptualizations of performance can each provide important insights that are not necessarily mutually exclusive. As Nelson argues, performances of identity need to be thought about in terms of thinking subjects who ‘sometimes appropriate dominant identities and who sometimes contest or change [or reinterpret] them’ (Nelson 1999: 50

345). As Hyndman and de Alwis (2005) point out, there are times when we

consciously and strategically perform an identity, depending on the context, ‘stage’

and audience. As Pile and Lewis (1996) argue, we have varying degrees of consciousness about the identities we perform and on one level, we may be unconsciously reproducing dominant norms while on another level we are simultaneously performing another identity in a conscious and strategic way. For example, while it is considered more natural for a woman to wear make-up than for a man, an assumption that is taken for granted and naturalized, there are times when a woman is conscious of the fact she is performing a role as a particular woman, when she purposefully and strategically affects a heightened femininity. Butler’s work needs to be taken one step further to understand how dominant discourses are remade through daily practice, requiring a creative re-thinking of the importance of historical and geographical context, subjectivity, and agency (Nelson, 1999).

While Butler tends to overlook the range of daily activities that require varying degrees of agency, Goffman avoids analysis of naturalized social categories.

Both of these positions provide a valuable way to consider performance and there is adequate common ground to move forward. Both approaches see human identity as formed through societal norms. Whether conscious and intentional, as in Preedy’s performance on the beach of Spain, or subconscious as in Butler’s theory of gender performance, identity is always socially constructed and citational: it always ‘cites’, or refers back to, recognizable norms. If the action is not citational, then the performance loses its social meaning and hence its ability to be recognized. What is needed is more empirically grounded work which incorporates a broader understanding of performance and the common ground of Butler and Goffman to examine the spatialities of performance in a more linguistically accessible way. The 51

way in which performance has been deployed (as either completely intentional or completely unintentional) can be reconceptualized as a multi-layered act, in which deep, unconscious performances of naturalized identities are enacted along with – or

even within – conscious, strategic performances. Individual acts consist of an ‘upper’

intentional layer that coordinates or assembles a ‘lower’ layer consisting of naturalized, unconscious practices8.

2.4 Indonesian Nationalism Over the past two decades, the nation has been theorized in a number of ways that are helpful in understanding Indonesian nationalism. As Jackson and Penrose

(1993: 1) powerfully argue, the concept of the ‘nation’ (and race) is a social construction, the ‘product of specific historical and geographical forces, rather than biologically given ideas whose meaning is dictated by nature’. This ‘imagined

community’ (Anderson 1991 [1983]) relies upon a set of ‘invented traditions’

(Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983) which often cite selected historical rituals and symbols to legitimize the leadership and to link heterogeneous groups with little in common.

These invented traditions can be spectacular and operate on a grand scale or they can be vested in the more banal places and practices of everyday life (Billig 1995). The nation is characterized by the quest for a unified apparatus of power and a desire for the interchangeability of its citizens (Anderson 1994). For example, in Indonesia a civil servant from Sulawesi is interchangeable with a civil servant from Sumatra in that they both speak the same language, have had the same education and can hold the same position anywhere in the national bureaucracy. The inherent constructedness of nations means that they require constant maintenance (Parker 2003) through the

8 These terms denote upper and lower levels of awareness rather than referring to the priority or importance of layers. 52

deployment of particular strategies aimed at regulating, controlling and governing subjects (Philpott 2000).

Much of the work on the Indonesian nation investigates the emergence of nationalism in the decades leading up to Independence and examines why it took the form it did. In his seminal text Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (1952),

George Kahin provides an in-depth examination of the history of Indonesian nationalism up to the end of the Revolution in 1949. Writing from the unique position of having been the only American to be in Indonesia during the Revolution, Kahin offers great insight into the development of the early nationalist movement, competing nationalist visions and the ultimate triumph of the Republicans as the post-

Independence national leaders. Clive Christie (1996) traces the process of decolonization in Southeast Asia and the rise of nationalisms, arguing that many analyses (including Kahin’s) tend to view nationalism through the eyes of the state in a way that naturalizes the nationalist vision of the winners and treats the ‘losing’ nationalist movements as pathological problems, rather than having their own logic and justifications. James Siegel (1997) is concerned with the use of language in

Indonesia’s revolution and how an understanding of nationalism was created through a sense of modernity engendered in the adoption of music, clothing, language and books which translated into a new ‘Indonesian’ cultural world.

Influenced by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s (1960) Religion on Java,

Indonesia scholars in subsequent decades tended to read Indonesian politics and nationalism through the lens of ‘culture’. For example, rather than comparing post-

WWII Indonesia to early modern Europe, Harold Crouch (1978) and Benedict

Anderson (1990) look to earlier Java-based empires, drawing comparisons between contemporary political cultures and Majapahit and Mataram predecessors. Others 53

adopt the metaphor of Javanese wayang kulit [leather shadow puppets] to explain

Indonesian nationalism with the president as the dalang, or puppet master, or draw

comparisons between the presidents and sultans, rather than with other dictators

(Widjanarko 1974; Loveard 1999; MacDonald 1999). Lele (1993) critiques this

tendency to view the Indonesian nation and leaders through a ‘cultural’ lens as

orientalising, arguing that this approach assumes a deterministic relationship between

‘culture’ and certain styles or forms of politics used exclusively outside ‘the West’.

Similarly, Jenkins (1984) contends that it is more appropriate to compare Suharto

with Napoleon, arguing that Javaneseness is a mere smokescreen that disguises the

similarities he has with other leaders.

The construction of a national culture is an essential part of nation-building in

Indonesia (Hooker 1993) and several scholars have examined the relationship

between local / regional cultures and the national culture. Hooker observes that the

New Order has been active in promoting and moulding a national culture to

emphasize that ‘development will not be at the expense of cultural life; on the

contrary, they are inextricably linked’ (Hooker 1993: 4). Cultural life, as it relates to the nation, is profitably studied through Taman Mini, the national theme park.

Errington (1998) examines how Javanese dominance over other cultures is expressed through the design of the park.

A number of scholars have examined how Indonesian nationalism is expressed materially through architecture and built space. Their work provides insight into how the state’s national ideology is spatially expressed and represented to the citizenry.

Nas (1992) examines the symbolism of Jakarta and the elite’s production of ‘official’ symbols in the urban landscape, treating the city as a sort of container for meaning.

Similarly, Leclerc (1993) examines Jakarta’s grand monuments created for nation- 54

building purposes. Errington (1998) examines the way in which the New Order

sought to replicate both past forms that evoked a sense of continuity and specifically

Javanese royal forms, with the aim of projecting an air of legitimacy to the populace.

MacDonald (1995) examines how Indonesian nationalism has been expressed through the national monument in Jakarta. Using methods in ‘new’ cultural geography,

MacDonald examines the ideas, meanings, and representations embedded in the landscape, analyzing what is represented in the Indonesian landscape and how.

One limitation of this literature lies in its exclusive focus on spectacular

monuments in Jakarta rather than on the more modest-scale monuments at the

provincial and even the village level. However, while scholars describe various

nationalistic environments and what they symbolize, they do not focus their analysis

on what these environments actually do to encourage and discourage the behaviour of

visitors and how visitors may resist or reinterpret official meanings of these spaces.

Nationalism is not necessarily emancipatory as not all members of the nation benefit from or imagine themselves to be part of the same ‘imagined community’

(Anderson 1991 [1983]). With Indonesia’s diversity of cultures, Reid (2005) points to

some of the problems in reconciling local histories with the national ideal, for while

the state’s nationalism is the most dominant, there are a range of alternate

nationalisms in Indonesia. Reid (1979) argues that the development of Indonesian nationalism was a conscious quest for justification using selective interpretations of

history as the foundation for the nation. The new nation focused exclusively on

historical claims which served to unite the nation rather than to ‘inquire further into

their diverse social structures, belief system, and economies’ (Reid, 1979: 290). In a more recent essay, Reid (2005) examines how state nationalism has been an obstacle in attempting to write the history of an independent Indonesia. As the state accepts 55

only one version of nationalism, local, social or alternative histories were untold and rebellion or conflict was dismissed as deviations (Mulder 2000; Reid 2005). In

Bertrand’s (2004) book Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict in Indonesia, he examines how regional cultures as well as Islam are challenging and reinterpreting the national model to the extent that the very definition of the Indonesian nation has been placed under scrutiny. Others examine the successful independence of East Timor and continuing campaigns in Aceh, Riau, Maluku and Irian Jaya as alternate ‘imagined communities’ to Indonesia (Browne 1998; Colombijn 2003; Ping 2005).

As Wang Gungwu (2005) argues in Nation-Building: Five Southeast Asian

Histories, while much has been written about nationalism leading up to independence in Southeast Asia, little has been written about what national leaders actually did after independence. However, several recent studies in the context of Indonesia examine how the individual subject is produced through state policy. Lyn Parker’s (2003) book

From Subjects to Citizens: Balinese Villagers in the Indonesian Nation-State is an excellent addition to the literature on nation-building in post-Independence Indonesia.

Parker meticulously examines processes of nationalisation in the context of a village in Bali to examine how the state, through its ‘bureaucratic arrangements, national ideologies and development programmes, has intimately penetrated the daily lives of

Balinese villagers’ (2003: 1). While much of the work on nation-building has centered on the ‘inner islands’ (Java and Bali) and Jakarta in particular, Noboru Ishikawa

(1998, 2003, 2008) has examined the process of nation-building in a rural border area in Borneo. Ishikawa provides valuable insight into how the Indonesian nation affects the everyday lives of Indonesians who live along the border with Malaysia. Ishikawa and Parker both provide rich empirical material to examine how policies crafted in

Jakarta are enacted in everyday life at the village level, a contrast with much of the 56

literature on Indonesian nationalism which tends to focus on Jakarta and on more ideological issues or tends towards ‘introverted, sometimes precious cultural studies’ that ignore the Indonesian state and how it affects citizens’ lives (Parker 2003: 12).

One of the problems with much of the current literature on Indonesian society and nationalism is the tendency to overstate the differences between the Old and New

Orders without examining the continuities between the two. The massacre of the communists in 1965-66 and the subsequent power change has become a landmark event in the study of Indonesia that may obscure many similarities between the two regimes, despite the fact that anti-communist violence occurred almost exclusively on

Java and Bali. The two Orders also tend to be contrasted in terms of general political practices and the actions of the elite, leaving a gap in terms of how people’s everyday

lives, daily routines, and understandings of their identity actually changed over time.

Furthermore, many prominent academics who researched in Indonesia during the Old

Order experienced difficulties and restrictions on their activities during the New

Order. The most infamous example is Benedict Anderson’s ban from Indonesia by the

Suharto regime for contradicting the official New Order take on the communist

massacre of 1965 in a paper9 he co-wrote with fellow Cornell Indonesianist, Ruth

McVey (Friend, 2003). This may have served to bias their research to some degree in

favour of the Old Order and to emphasize distinctions rather than similarities between

the Orders. While I do not deny that significant differences exist between the Old and

New Orders, many of the national imaginings, performances, and everyday life

experiences of the populace may not have changed in predictable ways that simply

mirror political change in Jakarta.

9 This now-famous paper, referred to as the ‘Cornell Paper’, analyzed Suharto and the military’s role in the 1965 coup, claiming that Suharto deliberately began military action against the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) without approval from his superiors in order to eliminate his rivals and destroy the powerful Communist Party (Anderson and McVey, 1971). 57

2.5 Approaches to understanding power in Indonesian Society The analysis of power and domination on the one hand, and movements of resistance on the other, has attracted much interest across the social sciences, including in geography (Yeoh 1996; Sharp 2000; Rose 2002). In studying different ways in which dominant power is responded to, Rose argues that many theorists endeavour to ‘recognize the ongoing deconstruction of systems’ yet simultaneously reify the dominant power as primary (Rose 2002: 383). Despite cultural geographers’ understanding that contestation is part of any system of power, they have relied upon structuralist understandings of power, conceiving of the system as ‘something originally stable upon which deconstructive forces act’ (Rose 2002: 384). Agents are conceptualized as responding to a dominant power in a dualistic tit-for-tat relationship. In an effort to understand such systems of power, scholars further reify the system as a pre-established force, as something real and already present, rather than something continually coming into being. Following Gibson-Graham (1996),

Rose (2002) questions whether framing studies in terms of ‘resistance’ limits our understanding of social practice and actually serves to reinforce the very systems of power that practices of resistance are thought to undermine.

While there have been many attempts to understand, recognize and categorize

‘resistance’, there are two divergent challenges. On the one hand, by too narrowly selecting criteria of resistance (e.g. that which is openly expressed and clearly articulated such as protests, defacement, etc.) we risk overlooking certain forms of contradictory practice (e.g. not paying attention/wilful ignorance, reinterpretation of official meanings). On the other hand, if every moment of contradictory practice is an example of resistance (such as washing your car on a Sunday), the term becomes stripped of any practical use (Rose 2002). 58

Criticism has been levelled at scholars of Indonesia for failing to theorize

power in Indonesian society with the complexity of other disciplines (Taylor 1993;

Philpott 2000). In fact, in his essay ‘What does post-modernism do in contemporary

Indonesia’ Heryanto (1995: 40) argues against elite theorizing of power in the New

Order:

Power presents itself in excessive violence and naked brutality. No Indonesian needs any erudite philosophy or cultural criticism, French or otherwise, to tell them power is everywhere or how carceral their schools, offices, and factories can be.

While many scholars argue that the issue of power is a neglected aspect of studies of

Indonesia (and Southeast Asia more broadly), Heryanto is dismissive of the need to discuss power because it is ‘everywhere’. Philpott (2000: 161) argues that the absence of debates about power ‘implies widespread acceptance that power is universally negative and censorious in Indonesian political life’. In what follows, I provide a brief overview of the key ways in which power has been theorized in Indonesia before discussing how power can be helpfully understood in the context of nationalization in

Pulau Penyengat society.

Scholarly work on Indonesia has commonly taken an approach which relies

upon structuralist understandings of power, in which the state, most frequently the

New Order, is conceptualized as a dominant, stable, homogeneous system. A binary distinction is perpetuated which emphasizes the dominant and romanticizes the resistant. In the case of Indonesia, power has been approached using several standard analytical frameworks. The first is Geertz’s aliran model which contends that there

are three distinct channels of power in Indonesia (priyayi, abangan, and santri) which he relates to particular socio-political forces. Priyayi, according to Geertz, represent the intellectual and court ideology based on Hindu-Buddhist and Javanese mystical thinking. This group has been connected to modern bureaucratic officials and the 59

political party PNI (Partai Nasional Indonesia, National Party of Indonesia). Abangan

consists of the Javanese masses and is based on popular syncretic ideology and

Javanese animism. Geertz has associated the abangan strain with the political party

PKI (Partai Komunis Indonesia, Communist Party of Indonesia). The santri, representing the pious Islamic world view in the outer islands as well as Java, have been connected with the Muslim political party Masyumi10, landowners, and

indigenous merchants (Geertz 1959). This theorization of power has re-emerged as an

explanatory tool in analyzing political corruption in Indonesia (Heidenheimer 1993), in understanding the New Order government as priyayi (Liddle 1996), in understanding internal problems of the PKI (Ricklefs 2001: 294), and the various

Muslim practices in Indonesia (Schwarz 1994).

The second approach to understanding power in Indonesia is Anderson’s ‘idea of power in Javanese culture’ which he argues is different from that in the ‘West’

(Anderson 1990). The basic differences are that in the Javanese tradition, power is concrete, exists independently of different rulers, and power is homogenous, rather than being unique to particular rulers. The amount of power in the universe is constant, so more power gained by one group is power lost by another. Finally, power does not raise questions of legitimacy as it simply exists outside of questions of ethics, morality, good and evil. Philpott (2000) has critiqued Anderson’s reliance upon culture to explain power as being deterministic and Orientalist. Anderson’s approach stabilizes the category of ‘Java’ and constructs a ‘unified’ image of power with troubling consequences. First, it fails to account for dissent in New Order politics. Second, it presumes the existence of an underlying, static tradition that functions as a societal reference point. Liddle critiques the approach as providing ‘no

10 Masyumi (the Consultative Council of Indonesian Muslims) was created in 1943 by the Japanese in order to bring prominent Islamic leaders under surveillance. After independence, it became an important Islamic political party (Effendy 2003). 60

tools with which to analyze the historical process by which a set of ideas presumably

dominate in pre-colonial times maintains its influence in post-colonial Indonesian

political thought’ (Liddle 1997:1-2).

The third approach is taken by Liddle, who takes a ‘key actor’ approach to

understanding power relations in Indonesia, which assumes that particular individuals

are pivotal in determining events rather than events being determined by broader

forces. According to Liddle, the Indonesian president was able to act autonomously

and was relatively free to craft his own political strategy. Liddle’s approach basically

maintains Anderson’s ‘Javanese cultural lens’ and, in relying upon the agency of the

president, neglects the class and gender dimensions of politics. While an undoubtedly

powerful individual, Suharto did not act independently from culturally embedded

notions about class and gender in his decision-making.

Several Indonesia scholars have engaged Foucault’s contributions to the study

of power in ways that deconstructs the total hegemony of the state that Heryanto

claims (Philpott 2000; Langston 2001). Significantly, Foucault’s governmentality

does not consider civil society and the state as binary opposites:

Power is not so much a matter of imposing constraints upon citizens as ‘making up’ citizens capable of bearing a kind of regulated freedom. Personal autonomy is not the antithesis of political power, but a key term in its existence, the more so because most individuals are not merely subjects of power but play a part in its operations. (Rose and Miller 1992: 174)

Through a complex of images, practices and ‘knowledges’, the dominant justify and naturalize their dominance (Foucault 1977). Significantly, Foucault discusses the body as being directly involved in power relations, as power operates through bodies as ‘bio-power’, consisting of ‘diverse techniques for achieving the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations’ (see also Foucault 1978; Dreyfus and Rabinow 61

1983). These techniques involve surveillance and self-regulation over force and

coercion.

Scholars who take a Foucauldian approach seek to understand how the

individual citizen internalizes the dominant discourse to regulate his or her conduct.

Langston (2001) argues that simply examining the authoritarian configuration of the

New Order Regime provides an incomplete understanding of power in Indonesia.

Drawing on Philpott’s (2000) work, Langston believes that Foucault’s concept of

governmentality is valuable in theorizing how the role and bodily performance of the

individual is part of the process of government. According to Foucault (1980: 220),

‘power’ refers to the relations between free agents as a ‘structure of actions’. The state

is seen to have certain principles or ‘rationalities’ which it seeks to convey through

various ‘technologies’, ultimately employed with the aim of regulating the behaviour

of the individual (and by extension, the population). For effective government, the

state relies upon individuals to self-regulate their conduct in line with the state’s

principles to become the ideal national citizen. Foucault places importance upon the role of the populace in how power operates, arguing that the governed emerge to

become part of the state structure. While Parker (2003) does not explicitly cite

Foucault, her empirical work challenges assumptions about power in Indonesia that rely upon dichotomies between the state and the people, suggesting that

despite the dark totalitarian forces of military intelligence and surveillance, the threat of violence and the intrusions of government, villagers’ experience of the Indonesian state has not been one of menace and coercion. (Parker, 2003: 265)

Far from how the Indonesian state is frequently conceptualised, it is not simply a powerful, monolithic decision-making elite who implement state policy; it is also regular people who implement state policy through attending school, voting, getting immunised or paying taxes. In this way, Foucault’s concept of ‘governmentality’ can 62

be employed as a tool to understanding the relationship between power, space and the

performance of the individual national citizen in Indonesia.

In their writing on the media in Indonesia, Sen and Hill (2000) examine power

as it is enacted through the media. They emphasize that ‘censorship does not work if

the censors and programmers, the creators of cultural texts and their consumers

interpret differently’ (Sen and Hill 2000: 10). For example, the military’s internet web

page does not serve as propaganda if no one turns to it for information or opinions.

They also recount how MacGyver, a character from an American TV adventure

drama from 1980s, is interpreted by many Indonesians as being a ‘defender of human

rights’. By citing this example, Sen and Hill make the point that the social, political,

and cultural context of reception is crucial. Furthermore, rather than being passive

consumers of state ideology, citizens often reinterpret nationalistic ideas, landscapes,

and performances in ways that the state neither comprehends nor controls.

2.6 Summary In this chapter I have critically reviewed the literature and drawn together key

ideas that underwrite and support the rest of my thesis and help guide me through the

analysis and interpretation of my empirical chapters. While I am reading from a

diverse set of literature, there are several common strands that help to conceptualize

my thesis. The first is a general shift from analysis that assumes static conditions

towards a greater emphasis on understanding dynamism, movement, process and

performativity. Where culture, landscape, identity, and power were once thought of as

stable, recent scholarship is increasingly placing more priority on how they are

created and maintained, what they do, their performative qualities and their inconsistencies and unevenness. 63

The second theme stems from a feminist-inspired turn towards the everyday.

Power operates simultaneously through many media, including landscape and

performance, and at many scales, from the global, national, and the city, down to the

home and the body. Though there is value in theorizing spectacular events, monuments, architecture and landscapes, this should not be done to the exclusion of

the everyday spaces and actions that constitute people’s lives. Since most Indonesians

do not live in Jakarta, examining only official national landscapes and monuments in

the capital is a limited way of understanding the processes and tools of

‘nationalization’.

The third theme is related to the deconstruction of dichotomies. While such

binaries as power / resistance, subject / object, human / non-human have been

traditional frames for analysis, scholars in recent decades argue that not only do these

dichotomies create an inaccurate reading of the world, they narrowly structure the

field of inquiry, implying that everything must be understood as, for example, ‘power’

or ‘resistance’, with less exploration of negotiation, compromise or multiple

interpretations.

The current literature on performance provides a useful approach to

understanding how identity is something that is always coming into being and

maintained through repetitive actions, rather than something that is inherent.

However, there is an unaddressed complexity in current formulations of performance

that do not take into account the multiple ‘layers’ of identities that we simultaneously

perform with varying degrees of consciousness. As identity is multi-faceted and is performed on many levels of consciousness depending on the context, Butler’s

theorization of an always unconscious subject and Goffman’s theorization of an

always active, aware subject occur simultaneously at any given time. For example, 64

Preedy on the beach in Spain is aware he is performing as he consciously connives to look like an experienced traveler. However, as Butler would argue, he is also enacting

deeper social performances of gender and sexual roles revealed in his behaviour, dress

and mannerisms on the beach as well as class and societal roles in his decision to travel to coastal Spain for his vacation. Similarly, citizens perform a multitude of roles which can be conceptualized as being on different levels of consciousness

simultaneously.

This literature review has provided justification for this research through

identifying several gaps in existing research on ideology and power relations in

landscape, performance and performativity, and the study of Indonesian nationalism

and power in Indonesian society. Few scholars have examined how national identity

is performed and how performances can be encouraged through landscape. Despite

massive attempts by the Indonesian state to socially engineer its populace, there is a

surprising lack of work theorizing how citizens’ actions and their bodies are

mobilized for nation-building goals. While these are broad areas that require extensive

research, my thesis begins to fill some of these gaps in the research.

Having reviewed the relevant literature and related it to my research, in the

next chapter I outline the methodological approach I have taken in my thesis.

65

Chapter 3 – Methodology

3.1 Introduction This chapter describes the methodology that has guided my research. In

section 3.2, I consider the particularities of conducting research in Indonesia in general and Pulau Penyengat in particular in order to then discuss the methods appropriate for the research topic and context. In section 3.3, I examine the informational requirements needed to address my research objectives. Based on the conceptual framework developed in Chapter Two, I examine the methodology used in previous studies of performance and performativity, before providing an overview of and justification for each method selected and some of the problems I encountered using each. Section 3.4 examines ethical issues of my thesis, followed by a chapter summary (3.5).

3.2 Fieldwork context In formulating my methodology, it was important first to understand the

fieldwork contexts (Patton 2002). Gaining an understanding of Indonesian society and

bureaucratic culture as well as the social dynamics of Pulau Penyengat and Tanjung

Pinang11 would help determine the most appropriate and effective methods to pursue.

Several early visits to Pulau Penyengat, Tanjung Pinang and Jakarta, as well as prior

experience in Indonesia, helped to narrow down the options of possible methods. The

following two sections examine the major challenges posed and opportunities

presented in conducting research in Indonesia and in Pulau Penyengat in particular.

11 Because Tanjung Pinang is located near Pulau Penyengat and is the provincial capital, it was important for me to spend some time there in order to understand the dynamics between the two. Furthermore, some civil servants and all high school students commute daily to Tanjung Pinang, making the city an important part of many people’s lives. 66

3.2.1 Conducting research in Indonesia While the particularities of conducting field work in Indonesia are widely discussed informally among researchers, little has been published on research experiences or on qualitative methodology in Indonesian contexts. Several key opportunities and challenges for foreign researchers exist in Indonesia that can affect fieldwork strategies and methods.

As in any fieldwork, it is crucial to tap into extensive networks of social connections and to be flexible and responsive to changing fieldwork conditions. As

Cloke et al (2004: 185) emphasize, networking is something that needs to be done from the beginning of a project. They write that researchers

have to learn how to work through networks, to make appropriate connections and to ‘go with the flow’ when preconceptions come to light and alternative interpretations begin to make more sense. So it is not a good idea to follow the ‘standard three-stage ... read-then-do-then-write’ model of research design (Cook and Crang 1995: 19) to prepare for such an unpredictable process.

This advice is particularly helpful in Indonesia where obtaining information through official channels is challenging and where tapping into networks is the most productive way to obtain information, contacts, and data. The Indonesia scholar

Takashi Shiraishi has commented on the uniqueness of research in Indonesia, noting that despite myriad frustrations and setbacks, it is usually possible to gain access to important government authorities through an informal chain of contacts (unpublished work, cited in Siegel 1997). Shiraishi describes Indonesia today as a network of connections comparable to huge tribes; once you know one person in a ‘tribe’, others within that ‘tribe’ will be able to put you into contact with anyone within the ‘tribe’s’ sprawling connections. The following excerpts from my field journal capture my experiences of the possibilities that networking in Indonesia can bring if one remains flexible enough to take advantage of unpredictability: 67

This morning I sat in the Chinese kopitiam [coffee shop] to organize my notes and figure out what needed to be done. ... Lots of journalists gather here in the morning and I started chatting with a group of them. ... They were going to an event at the Governor’s office soon and asked if I would like to join them to meet the Governor. Within half an hour someone had dug up a borrowed baju kurung [Malay women’s tunic and skirt set] for me to wear and I was soon sitting side saddle on the back of a motorbike wearing pink polyester on the way to meet the Governor... (Tanjung Pinang, 10 February, 2006)

The National Archives had an anniversary party today. The archives were open but no one was working so I couldn’t request documents or get photocopies made. The friends I made at the archives brought me outside to the huge buffet lunch. ... lots of corny entertainment and hundreds of archival workers from provincial archives across the country. ... Rendra [famous Indonesian poet and activist] was the invited celebrity speaker. ... I chatted with his assistant who happened to date a former classmate from my high school while she was living in Yogya in the mid-90s. ... I ended up spending the afternoon at Rendra’s artist commune in Depok and refusing offers to stay the week there. (Jakarta, 18 May 2006)

A second condition in Indonesia is the high level of red tape, bureaucracy, bribery, corruption and inefficiency, all problems that are so pervasive that, depending on the research topic and information sought, they can potentially pose a serious obstacle to conducting fieldwork. In contrast to the ease with which researchers can tap into many informal networks to find information and contacts, they face serious challenges obtaining information and even permission to research from official sources. As has been noted by Dean Forbes (1988) in his essay on conducting research in Indonesia, the process of obtaining a research visa requires months and lots of paperwork: a letter of recommendation from the Indonesian Embassy in

Singapore, several weeks in Jakarta to activate the visa in various offices around the city (Police, Immigration, City Hall, LIPI, the government-run Indonesian Institute of

Sciences which sponsors foreign rsesearchers), a week in Jakarta to renew it after six months, and a week to deactivate the visa. At any time in the process, one of many offices can raise problems and decide not to issue permission to research. For example, after holding a research visa for six months, a senior civil servant in the 68

Immigration Office in Jakarta refused to renew my visa until I changed the topic and

location of my research! After a long discussion I told him that I would adopt his

suggestion of limiting my research on national identity to a study of MONAS, the

national monument, and Taman Mini Indonesia Raya, the national theme park. Very

real bureaucratic constraints such as this impacted the methods I selected and also

raise ethical issues that will be examined in section 3.4.

Similarly, the inefficiency and disorganization that I experienced at various

state institutions during several preliminary visits influenced my methodological

approach. While I had originally held high hopes for obtaining information about the

development of Indonesian identity at the National Archives, I discovered that the

post-Independence collection was woefully out of date and incomplete. The catalogue

had last been updated in the 1980s, meaning that while the collection had grown over

the past two decades, none of the items collected since then were catalogued nor

could they be viewed. Members of staff were frequently unable to find listed

documents, and for reasons I could not discern, I was only able to view several items

per day during the five hours in which the archives were open. I was unable to view

any video material I requested because it was in the process of being converted from

film strips to video and because there was no viewing room for visitors to use.

A third challenge to conducting research in an Indonesian context relates to

the pervasive machismo of a small but active portion of men. While most Indonesian

men are polite and respectful of women, sexual harassment can be a daily reality that

is often not confined simply to inappropriate comments. As a single female researching in Indonesia, facing constant problems with men was a concern that played a role in shaping what I felt I would be able to accomplish in my fieldwork.

For example, after my interview with a high-ranking middle-aged diplomat at the 69

Indonesian Embassy to obtain a letter of recommendation needed to apply for a

research visa, the diplomat proceeded to call and text message me for the following

few weeks. During a preliminary visit to Tanjung Pinang, I stopped in at the police

headquarters for the province to ask some questions. I was immediately surrounded

by young police officers, a few of whom took my bag from me, removed my camera

from my bag and went on to snap photos of each other in inappropriate poses around me. The police officers then went on to drill me about my marital status, why I did not have children, and what kind of birth control I used. When I visited one provincial government office in the hopes of asking employees some questions and observing some of the office’s national rituals, the boss introduced me to the entire office staff as his girlfriend and continued to interact in inappropriate ways with me over the course of my visit. Due to many unproductive and off-putting interactions such as these, I realized that this situation had to be accommodated by my fieldwork methods.

3.2.2 Pulau Penyengat: Research in a small Malay village In the context of a village, the bureaucracy and interactions with men as sketched out above were not a concern. I found that, in contrast to the experiences mentioned above, my interactions with men in Pulau Penyengat were more positive and constructive. However, conducting research in Pulau Penyengat brought different opportunities and constraints, an understanding of which was necessary to help select appropriate methods. Some of the opportunities and constraints were generally typical of research in a village context, while others were specific to Pulau Penyengat.

First, because Pulau Penyengat is a small island (under 2 km long, under 1 km wide) with a small population (2000), it has an intimate feel to it that carries certain advantages for a foreign researcher such as myself. Due to its small size, strangers are noted and often questioned as to their purpose on the island. Because it is an island, 70

there is a very different dynamic than in larger towns or even villages of a similar size

located on the nearby islands of Bintan or Batam which are connected by roads and

are therefore accessible to all sorts of passersby. Pulau Penyengat is only accessible

by small wooden motorboats from Tanjung Pinang that operate between about 6 a.m.

until 11 p.m. As a ‘white’ female outsider who is able to speak Malay, I found locals

to be friendly, welcoming and approachable and I was able to quickly meet a wide

spectrum of people, get involved in many aspects of community life and cultivate

friendships. However, the small size also meant that there was no anonymity or

privacy and the ubiquitous village gossip meant that I had to take extra care to respect

village sensibilities in my behaviour, dress and social etiquette. For example, while in

Jakarta I was able to meet with male interviewees without any eyebrows being raised.

On Pulau Penyengat, I needed to be careful who I was seen with and where so as not to raise suspicions that I was having illicit relations with any of my male interviewees.

Second, although Pulau Penyengat has a relaxed feel and slow pace of life, as I

discovered after several visits, the island is deeply divided and there is much gossip

and politicking among residents. Divisions ran along class lines, between descendents

of the sultan (rajas) and non-rajas, between hamlets, and among competing rajas. The

direct descendants of the Sultan of Riau have long been divided as to how the island

should be run and there have been numerous power struggles in recent years as local

rajas vie for control over the physical and symbolic legacy of the sultanate. Since the

formation of the Propinsi Kepulauan Riau (Kepri), or ‘Riau Islands Province’,

funding has been made available for Pulau Penyengat to develop a tourism industry, a

double-edged sword that has further divided the island. Communities nearest to the

developments are perceived to benefit from funding, whereas communities located

farther from projects feel left out. 71

As I began to understand Pulau Penyengat’s social divisions, I realized the

danger of being perceived as being allied with one particular group, thus making it

difficult to interact with those in other groups. For example, I found myself being

taken under the wing of several powerful people from the raja families. I soon learned

from various villagers that previous researchers had stayed with one particular raja

family, their home functioning as an unofficial guesthouse for visiting researchers,

complete with a set price for room and board that is known informally among

academics on several continents. While this may not have affected the research of

other scholars focusing on Malay culture and history, it was problematic given my

topic to be perceived as allied with the local elite. Since hotels and guesthouses are banned on Pulau Penyengat, I looked beyond the rajas for accommodation options.

My decision to stay in the homes of various villagers who invited me is covered in more detail in the research ethics section (3.5).

Third, living and conducting research in an Indonesian village is not for everyone. In a village there is the need to give more of oneself than in a city as it is impossible to maintain much distance with the researched without being considered sombong [arrogant] or tertutup [emotionally inaccessible]. In Pulau Penyengat (and in

Indonesia more broadly), residents have very little personal time or space, the need for which is considered akin to a personality defect. In each home I stayed in, I shared a bedroom and often a bed with a daughter or two. The necessity of staying in villagers’ homes provided a valuable opportunity to experience daily life and understand their values. Different fieldwork contexts and methods benefit from different types of personalities (Moser 2008), and the lack of privacy and the intensely social environment of Pulau Penyengat required a more extroverted personality.

Although I met several researchers who felt frustrated and trapped by the lack of 72

privacy and constant scrutiny on Pulau Penyengat, I was fortunately able to greatly

enjoy the intimate domestic conditions and formed many close friendships. My

enjoyment was clear to many on Pulau Penyengat and ultimately helped open doors in

my fieldwork.

Fourth, when I first started visiting Pulau Penyengat, the controversy about the

‘anti-Muslim’ cartoons published in a Danish newspaper was a favourite conversation topic on the island, particularly with the men who meet regularly for tea in the square next to the mosque. There was a general feeling of outrage and a sense that Islam was under attack by the non-Muslim world. The degree to which people felt a part of a

‘global Islam’ was something I had never experienced to such an extent during many previous trips to Indonesia. I found many residents of Pulau Penyengat were closely following the news, listening to the radio, reading several local newspapers and were sensitive to the ‘clash of civilizations’ that was being trumped up in the local press. I was asked many questions about why the cartoons were published and what I thought of them and my take on events. Given this situation, I felt that as a non-Muslim foreigner it was important for me to be particularly sensitive to local sentiment and to make an effort to build up a trusting rapport with villagers.

3.3 Precedents: Methodology for performance and performativity Adopting performance and performativity as a conceptual framework to

understand the embodied aspects of national identity poses two main methodological

challenges. First is the difficulty in capturing or representing dynamic processes.

Several geographers have argued that cultural geographers, particularly those

concerned with performance and performativity, have failed to develop methods that

recognize this shift in focus towards movement. Latham (2003) has criticized the

limited methods used by geographers in empirical research, arguing that the cultural 73

turn has created a ‘strange gap between theory and empirical practice’. To Thrift

(2000b; 2000a), the cultural turn in geography is marked by its methodological timidity and a lack of sensate life that research captures. Both Latham and Thrift view the recent interest in using the metaphor of performance as an opportunity to go beyond the politics of representation. More radical methodological approaches, they argue, can help make a more empirically engaging human geography. Cloke et al

(2004: 189) similarly suggest that a researcher can push the boundaries of research design through ‘new media technologies which can help shift attention beyond words

... to consider the experiential side of its methods in a more holistic manner’.

The second challenge is that performance is conceptualized in a dichotomous way with Goffman on the one hand conceptualizing a masterful, strategic subject and

Butler on the other hand conceptualizing the subject as a site for subconscious, unintentional performances of dominant discourses (see Chapter Two). While the work of Goffman, Butler and Thrift provides theoretical discussion of performance, their work offers few clues as to how researchers might empirically study performance and performativity. Since Butler’s work does not conceptualize agency or a conscious subject, her theoretical perspective would not lend itself to methods which yield reflective comments such as interviews. In contrast, Goffman’s theorization of a conscious and strategic subject lends itself to a range of qualitative methods. Thrift (2000c: 577) suggests that performance ‘provides a new set of qualitative methods which can be used to expand human geographers’ currently very limited (and often elitist) repertoire of ethnography, focus groups, in-depth interviews and the like’. Butler, Goffman, and Thrift do not offer sustained reflection on specific methodologies for understanding the performance of identities, particularly historical performances of identities. 74

Several geographers in recent years have conducted empirical studies adopting the concepts of performance and performativity in various contexts. In examining how space is performatively encountered in the context of caravanning, Crouch

(2003) engages in participant observation to temporarily become a part of the caravanning community. He uses detailed field notes to capture the activity and movement, noting the sensorial experiences of caravanning, the other caravanners, and the mundane, everyday gestures. Through interviews, he has caravanners reflect upon what they do and then speak of their experiences. Similarly, in his investigation of clubbing, Malbon (1999) engages in participant observation to deeply engage with performative aspects of identity and conducts interviews in an attempt to understand how clubbers themselves interpret their performances. Both of these studies attempt to describe the range of movements involved in certain contextualized performances.

Understanding how people actually perform and then contrasting it to how they understand and interpret their performance can elicit an understanding about how conscious or subconscious different aspects of these performances are.

Geographical studies that have examined embodiment, experience, and performance (Rowles 1978; Crang 1994; Malbon 1999) use participant observation to understand how people perform various identities and for what reasons. Scholars in geography examining performance and performativity have not explicitly discussed methodological issues, although it is clear that they have used several methods. In his study on workplace performances in the service industry Crang (1994) works as a waiter, studying the role of performance based on his own experience and observing and talking to co-workers at the restaurant. While these studies focus on contemporary performances, none investigate how performances of identity changed over time. 75

3.4 Methods After selecting Pulau Penyengat as my field site, the first strategy in my

fieldwork was to spend time in the village getting to know the island, gaining

familiarity with its politics and social structure, introducing myself to people,

socializing and gaining an understanding of the habits, values and views of the

residents, particularly with regard to the nation.

As Lyn Parker (2003: 10) observes in the context of conducting fieldwork in a

Balinese village,

everything is potential ‘data’. Every image, from the Independence Day parade to the poster of Sukarno on the lounge-room wall, every action, from the submissive snooping of a subservient peasant to the saluting of the flag by uniformed schoolchildren, is a little clue.

As Parker (2003) points out, the sources of data are infinite and one requires a balance

between staying focused on addressing research objectives and staying open to

creative possibilities. I spent several periods of between one and four weeks in

Jakarta, Tanjung Pinang and Pulau Penyengat at the early stages of the thesis in order

to allow the places and their own dynamics to help form my research questions. The

themes this thesis was structured around (work, education, and play) emerged from

spending time on Pulau Penyengat and observing how state strategies affected

residents’ lives in an embodied way. These themes helped to then focus the

information I needed to address my research objectives, and several qualitative

methods emerged as being suitable for my project and for the cultural context of

Pulau Penyengat. Table 1 lays out my research objectives, the informational

requirements needed, and methods able to gather the appropriate types of information.

76

Table 1 - Objectives, informational requirements and methods Objectives Informational requirements Methods -To understand the role of -state programs of nation-building – -interviews performance in the both at the national level and village -participant formation, dissemination, level observation and enforcement of official -information about how performances -primary sources national identity in of national identity are embodied (archives, government postcolonial Indonesia. - inventory of state-created national publication and -To expose the strategies spaces in Pulau Penyengat reports in the National employed by the state to -how nation-building strategies were Library) encourage citizens to enacted in Pulau Penyengat -interview officials perform various identities and locals within the context of power -video and photos relationships embedded in -informal discussion national landscapes.

-To examine the ways in -historical information about state -scholarly writing on which performances of national ideology and nation-building nation-building in national identity have and strategies Indonesia and Riau have not changed over the -historical information about how -government course of the Old and New residents of Pulau Penyengat have publications Orders and into the present. experienced nation-building -in-depth interviews strategies with those who remember changes -informal discussion -Explore how national -opinions of people about national -participant identities are understood, programs observation accepted, resisted and -observations of people in their daily -focus group reinterpreted by the lives discussion citizenry in complex and -an understanding of the relationship -in-depth interviews often conflicting ways on a between government programs and -informal discussion range of scales and what people actually do locations.

3.4.1 Primary and secondary sources I had initially assumed that the National Archives, located in Jakarta, would assist greatly in providing historical material that would help me to understand the national strategies of constructing national identity, how nationalization was implemented in the Riau islands, and how strategies have changed over time. The historical dimension to my thesis required that I access material from the Dutch and

Japanese occupations and the Old and New Orders, including information about colonial policies and philosophy and how they reached into the everyday lives of

Indonesians. After spending time examining the collection in the National Archives, I 77

realized it would be of little use. The collection was disorganized and had very little

post-Independence material. Although the collection of films at the National Archives looked promising, I was unable to view most or make copies of any for technical and bureaucratic reasons. Like the majority of English-language scholarly writing on

Indonesian nationalism, the material in the National Archives and in the National

Library focused primarily on emerging pre-Independence nationalism during the

Dutch occupation and on the Indonesian Revolution. Similarly, the tiny archives on

Pulau Penyengat maintained by one of the families descended from the sultan of Riau focuses almost exclusively on the history of Pulau Penyengat royalty. Personal archives such as family photo albums were of some use, but tended to record significant events such as weddings, parties, births and so on rather than the everyday aspects of life that are the concern of this thesis.

The National Library was more useful than the Archives and had a broader collection of post-Independence material, including many government publications filled with data on administrative matters and raw statistics. However, such publications offer no information on how policies were implemented, to what extent they changed the populace, how the policies mobilized people, and what physical form they took. Few government documents relating to nation-building from the post-

Independence period have been sent to the National Archives or the National Library as it is primarily material relating to the struggle for Independence that is valued.

Government offices have their own collections of documents dating as far back as there is storage space for. When visiting a government office in Jakarta I once witnessed a bonfire of files in the parking lot – the standard way to clear space in the offices for other uses. This material was not offered to the Archives, nor was there any sense that possibly important historical information was being destroyed. This 78

illustrates the problem of the unevenness of and inaccessibility to the materials in

Indonesia relating to national culture.

As I have pointed out in Chapter Two, the scholarly literature on Pulau

Penyengat and on Indonesian nationalism (with a few examples) tends to examine neither the embodied aspects of nation-building nor how the state’s strategies of nation-building affected everyday life in the village. With the lack of primary and secondary sources, I realized that local government officials and ordinary people would be the most valuable source of information about nation-building in Pulau

Penyengat and the embodied aspects of national identity.

3.4.2 Participant observation Participant observation is one of the key ways in which ethnographers attempt to understand the world views and the everyday lived experiences of people (Crang and Cook 2007). Wogan (2004) describes participant observation as ‘deep hanging out’, a phrase that aptly conveys the spirit of my fieldwork in Indonesia. Participant observation was broadly used to understand how people on Pulau Penyengat live, their values, and how their time was structured. As Pulau Penyengat is such a small and welcoming community, I was able to quickly immerse myself in the everyday activities of the village. I was invited to share everyday life experiences, including cooking, fishing, socializing, leisure activities and so on with villagers, which allowed ways of life, values, social structure, to gradually become apparent. Preliminary visits to my field site were made in 2004 and fieldwork was conducted from 2005-2007. I spent 39 weeks in the field, comprising a total of 273 days, each visit lasting from 3 days to several weeks (see Table 2). Rather than staying in my fieldsite for one long stretch, I chose to make numerous visits of varying lengths. As a married woman, many islanders considered it strange and mildly scandalous that my husband did not 79

accompany me on my research. Many islanders would have been suspicious if, living in Singapore, I had not travelled back and forth frequently and had I not brought my husband to the island. The many visits also allowed me to take much-needed breaks from the lack of privacy and intensely social environment of Pulau Penyengat and prevented me from getting pulled into island politics. While some scholars have rightfully pointed out the benefits of being an ‘insider’ with the community one is researching (hooks 1990; Tembo 2003), I found that as a non-local (non-Malay, non-

Indonesian) I was at an advantage to notice the many everyday, naturalized aspects that go un-noticed by locals and are difficult for many locals to formally describe

(Garfinkel and Sacks 1986). Table 3 outlines the contexts I sought out for participant observation on Pulau Penyengat as they relate to the conceptual themes in my thesis.

Table 2 - Schedule of fieldwork 2004 September 8 days December 13 days 2005 May 9 days July 7 days August 5 days November 14 days December 7 days 2006 February 17 days April 4 days May 28 days June 11 days July 17 days August 24 days September 18 days October 25 days November 4 days December 7 days 2007 February 8 days April 17 days May 6 days July 21 days October 3 days TOTAL 273 days / 39 weeks

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Table 3 - Sites for participant observation Themes Sites of participant observation Chapter Five: Working for the Nation • Informal sector (food stalls, gathering points for rickshaw drivers) • Fishing boats, gathering points for prawn collectors • Elementary school, Kelurahan Office, clinic Chapter Six: Educating the Nation • Classroom, school courtyard • School events (e.g. parades) Chapter Seven: The Nation at Play • Volleyball courts, main square (performance stage and takro court), performances off the island

As Cloke et al (2004: 177) point out, participant observation uniquely involves

‘studying both what people say they do and why, and what they are seen to do and say to others about this’. Through participant observation, in addition to both informal discussions and semi-structured interviews, I was able to observe gaps between what people say they do and what they actually do and how they understand and interpret their actions. This combination of methods can help to reveal the degree to which people are conscious they are performing.

I recorded the participant observation aspects of my fieldwork in several ways.

First, as a key aspect of participant observation I kept detailed field diaries (Sanjek

1990). In my notes, I made general observations and described the setting, what the participants were doing, forms of behaviour, and how participants interact with each other. Wayne Fife (2005) recommends recording sensations to remind the researcher later about uncomfortable constraints, key to the experience of performing particular versions of national identity. After participating in an activity, I wrote down general impressions, including sensorial observations. This helped me to understand and explain the day-to-day ways in which national identity is performed, helped to reveal repetitive patterns of behaviour, and to later analyze certain scripted performances 81

that involved, for example, confining and disciplining the body rather than allowing individual body movements.

Second, I took many photos of the built landscape of the island, particularly of state-created national infrastructure, and of people engaged in everyday activities.

Taking photos was not as intrusive as I had expected as digital cameras and mobile phones with cameras were common in the village and I found myself to be the subject of many more photos than I took on the island.

Third, as mentioned earlier, in order to capture the dynamism of the performances about which I was writing, I took video footage while conducting fieldwork. When filming, at times I sensed the ‘observer effect’, a principle that refers to changes that the act of observation brings about on that which is being observed.

However, this was dependent on the context. While it did not have an effect on sport or dance performances, it did have effect on national rituals. In general, however, my cheap mini video camera did not draw attention and I feel that, far more than my having a video camera, it was my presence that brought about an ‘observer effect.’

When engaging in participant observation, I was aware at times that participants changed their behaviour at times due to my presence. In some cases, I was told that some people did not normally bother to participate in some activities (such as teachers in Senam Pagi Indonesia) but were doing so because they felt they needed to put their best foot forward for a visitor. I could sometimes sense a general tension as some groups seemed to be trying a little harder in the presence of an outsider. This usually took the form of taking greater care during formal national rituals such as Upacara

Bendera and Senam Pagi Indonesia to demonstrate their discipline and patriotism to a foreigner. In my presence, these formal rituals also may have gone on longer than 82

usual with more prolonged and pedantic speeches from the principal or senior

government official.

Participant observation is not without some problems. Because it requires

getting close to the people one is researching, certain challenges emerge. At times I

found myself beginning to be pulled into village drama and pushed to choose sides

through my accommodation choices and who I was perceived to spend time with. To avoid appearing partisan and to gain more experiences with a spectrum of villagers, I

made an effort to spend time with a range of villagers. After spending three weeks at

the home of a raja family, I decided to accept the offer to stay at various homes of

non-raja families. While there were some disadvantages to moving around, it helped

me to avoid being seen as controlled by the raja family and allowed me to live at close

quarters with a wider spectrum of Pulau Penyengat society.

3.4.3 Selecting interviewees In order to understand the official views on nation-building it was important to

speak with state employees at the national, provincial and village levels, including those who work on a voluntary, part-time basis as representatives of the state. I approached officials directly or was introduced through existing connections and was usually able to have a discussion on the spot. I also sought the views of a variety of citizens who did not work for the state in order to understand how citizens interpreted state strategies of nation-building. I selected a range of people of different ages and socio-economic classes and a balance between genders. Many of the residents I met on Pulau Penyengat initially approached me out of curiosity or for a variety of other reasons. While it was not difficult to meet many people, it was easy to fall into meeting the same types of people, such as when being sheltered by the rajas. My obvious foreignness likely attracted many people who were curious, who wanted to 83

practice English or were local Casanovas. Before people knew who I was, far more

males approached me than females. To avoid having contact only with the types of

people who would approach me, I intentionally sought out those who did not

approach me. Some of these people were naturally shy or did not speak English and

assumed I did not speak Malay. Others held social positions in the village that were

low and others would intervene or prevent me from talking to them. Strategies for

meeting people included networking with existing contacts, participating in

community activities, hanging out in public gathering places, and approaching people

and introducing myself.

While the day-to-day interactions I had were not an even representation of the village, I tried to select a variety of people from Pulau Penyengat society to interview

(Table 4).

Table 4 – Selection of interviewees Total number % Male 33 51 Female 32 49 Children and youths 27 42 Working age people 34 52 Elderly 4 6 State workers 14 22 Non-state workers 20 31 Jakarta residents 5 8 Tanjung Pinang residents 4 6 Pulau Penyengat residents 56 86

3.4.4 Interviews Through interviews and many informal discussions of varying lengths I

attempted to gain an understanding of how state strategies of nation-building affected

the daily lives of a range of residents of Pulau Penyengat and their interpretations and

perceptions of their participation (or lack of participation). I sought to understand how

experiences of nation-building have changed over time as different state strategies

have been introduced on Pulau Penyengat. 84

Informal discussions were a key part of the research. Through informal chats, I

was able to get a sense of the community, their values, who the most and least

powerful people in the village were, the power dynamics and what the issues were

that villagers felt were important. These many informal discussions helped me to

focus my interviews and asked more targeted questions.

I began interviews with warm-up questions about their background, general

memories, and getting to know them, following local etiquette. I then advanced on to

open-ended questions, allowing the interviewee to ‘talk about the subject in terms of

their own frames of reference’ (May 1993: 112). Interviews lasted from between 20

minutes to over two hours. My interview questions are arranged in sections

(Appendix A). Not all questions were asked in one interview but were covered often

over the course of several meetings in which I steered the interviewee through several

topics. Some of the longer semi-structured interviews were recorded with permission,

although some interviewees did not wish to be recorded. Most interviewees did not want me to write their names down for fear that others would find out what they said and the information would somehow be used against them.

Shurmer-Smith (2004) points out that it is beneficial to hold interviews in places where interviewees feel comfortable. In my experience interviewing people on

Pulau Penyengat, I found that the less formal the situation, the more comfortable people were and the more they opened up and shared their views. For this reason, I tried to conduct semi-structured interviews over tea in a café, on a walk about the island, while preparing food, while watching a sporting event or dance performance, or looking through family photo albums. The interviews I conducted in more formal places such as government offices or sitting down in a living room with a family tended to be overburdened with the various power relationships of the workplace or 85

the home, resulting in answers that tended to be more supportive of the status quo and

less critical and honest.

The interviewees I selected represent a cross-section of Pulau Penyengat residents (see Table 4). I selected ten villagers who worked in some capacity for the state, as office workers in the kantor kelurahan on the island, civil servants who

worked in Tanjung Pinang, teachers, as a medical worker in the island’s clinic, and

volunteers for state-run programs. I selected ten villagers who worked but were not

employed by the state. This group included people involved in fishing, snack sellers,

store owners, rickshaw drivers, hotel workers, and a tailor. I also sought to capture a

selection of views from the youth, at whom many programs of nationalization are

targeted. I selected sixteen children from age six to thirteen and eleven from age

fourteen to nineteen, the age at which students normally graduate from high school.

I experienced several minor challenges in conducting interviews. First, while

none of the people I interviewed refused to answer my questions or discuss topics

related to my research, it was clear that there were many topics many people found far

more interesting. They expressed this by changing the topic, criticizing my research

topic, implying it was boring and that there were far more interesting aspects of

Malay and Indonesian culture to examine. I was frequently given suggestions for

alternate research topics, all of which fit into national ‘Taman Mini’ conceptual

hierarchies of culture, also the categories which have attracted among the most

scholarly attention from foreign researchers: Balinese dance, Javanese gamelan and

Malay cultural traditions were all suggestions I received and were obvious sources of

pride for many residents of Pulau Penyengat. These suggestions reflect the dominant

artistic tastes valued and promoted by the state and are rooted in research traditions 86

dating back to Dutch colonial times. As I discuss in the following section, I found group discussions helped to enliven the topics.

3.4.5 Focus groups After some time in the field I found that group discussions had a different dynamic from individual discussion that allowed people to explore and discuss different opinions, feed off one another’s energy, stay energized with the topic, and jog memories. In group discussion, one comment can trigger a chain of responses

(Cameron 2005) and has the potential to generate far more information than other research methods (Berg 1989; Stewart and Shamdasani 1990). As Lunt and

Livingstone (1996) point out, groups enthusiastically discuss a topic in which there is little interest on an individual level. Group discussions are useful in hearing a range of often constrasting views on specific topics (Crang and Cook 2007).

As Robyn Longhurst (2003) points out, it is useful at the start of a focus group discussion to engage participants in some kind of activity. I found it helpful to show photos or video footage I took of Senam Pagi Indonesia, dance, sports and other state performances so participants could reflect upon what they see and have a chance to discuss it with the group. Participants had not seen photos of some of these everyday performances and seeing photos helped people to consider them in a new way.

Geraldine Pratt (2000: 272; see also Clifford 1986) points out that focus group discussions are ‘public performance[s] that are both enabled and constrained by social conventions’. In the context of Pulau Penyengat, I felt that the composition of the focus groups was crucial to their success as many people tended to treat fellow villagers according to social convention that was incompatible with the open, uninhibited discussion required in a focus group. As pointed out by many scholars

(Stewart and Shamdasani 1990; Knodel 1993; Valentine 1999; Fern 2001), if a group 87

is highly diverse, there is the danger that those of a higher status (often men) will

dominate those of a lower status by interrupting and assuming the role of expert. I

found that class tensions on Pulau Penyengat could prevent productive discussion.

One illustration of such tensions is when the wedding of a young man on the island

was announced. The people around me responded to the news with excitement and

happiness. One woman in her 50s from the lowest socio-economic class and who was

friendly with the groom also showed her happiness, only to have several upper-class

women accuse her of being happy not at the marriage but at the prospect of getting a

free meal at the wedding. Predictably, this comment made the woman withdraw. With

this in mind, I made the decision to minimize the variability within each focus group.

I also found it beneficial to select ‘natural’ groups, groups who already knew each

other and would normally spend time together in a group (Holbrook 1996).

Holding discussions with ‘natural’ groups are not without problems. Although

ideally focus groups should be ‘spaces of resistance’ where participants can openly

critique or challenge the ideas of those in authority (Hyams 2004: 106), individuals

can fall into patterns of behaviour in which everyday power relations within the group may be maintained during the discussion and some may not feel comfortable expressing differing opinions (Kong 1998). Within a group there may be ‘friendship pairs’ who focus on each other and interact with in-jokes rather than with the whole group (Crang and Cook 2007). These problems may be reduced if the researcher screens potential participants (Burgess, Limb, and Harrison 1988; Krueger 1994), however this is not possible to do when dealing with already-existing groups (Crang and Cook 2007). While I found that there was at times some deference to the eldest in the group, the key difficulty for me in conducting focus groups was keeping the group focused and understanding their intimate language, inside jokes and assumed 88

knowledge. The groups who were close friends tended to get carried away with their own enjoyment of each others’ company and be somewhat difficult to keep focused on the questions as the discussions would veer off into favourite topics and routines of teasing and joking.

I spoke with five segments of society (children, youths, men, women and civil servants) who normally spent time together by choice, with the exception of civil servants who worked together. The members of the groups knew each other well and some were related in some way (cousins or part of the same branch of a family tree), were neighbours, or were long-time friends. I found each group in various ways. I was approached by many children on Pulau Penyengat and spent some time with several groups of them as they acted as my tour guides to the island, showing me their favourite spots and teaching me new Malay vocabulary. I met the youths and the men in the square next to the mosque. The men drank tea and played dominos regularly and the youths gathered in the square to socialize and to watch various activities in the square such as dance practice or takro [indigenous sport in which a rattan ball is kept in the air using only the feet]. The discussions I had with civil servants became group discussions when the entire office joined in discussion. After interacting with each group several times, I found that they were lively and were respectful of one another and, with the exception of the civil servants, routinely gathered to socialize.

Goss and Leinbach (1996: 119) note that while the literature on focus groups suggests that the role of the researcher should be confined to that of observer, while conducting research in Indonesia they found that it was more effective and more enjoyable for the participants if the researcher was engaged directly in the discussion and become ‘part of the evolving social drama.’ Similarly, I participated in the discussion at times, particularly if people wanted to know about practices in my own 89

country. Discussing national rituals (or lack thereof) in my own country also helped

interviewees to be aware that the practices that they experience as a normal part of

their daily lives are unique to Indonesia.

Where to meet is important for focus groups as participants must feel

comfortable (Denzin 1970). Since I used ‘natural’ groups in spontaneous discussions,

we spent time where the group was already gathered, as can be seen in Table 5. The

location of the focus groups depended on the habits of that particular group and on

what was socially appropriate. With groups of women, we would sit in someone’s

living room or on their patio where children could be watched and where they normally gathered socially. With groups of men, we would sit at a table of one of the cafes in the square next to the mosque.

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Table 5 - Focus groups Focus Dates age M/F Name occupation Location of discussion groups A. 12-02-06 11 M Ricki elementary school a cafe next to the square Children 9 M Zalmidian students where children buy sweet ice 8 M Ismit 12 M Adit B. 10-05-06 8 F Elli elementary school Children 7 F Putri students Front porch of the home I was 10 F Arista 8 F Ayu staying in. The children often 9 F Dewi gathered around to see if I 9 F Nurhasanah wanted to play so I frequently C. 13-02-06 6 F Cinta elementary school took the opportunity to ask Children 7 F Ava students them questions. 7 F Noor 9 F Linda 9 M Donny 10 M Sigit D. Youths 17-02-06 17 F Lela high school student In the main square, on the 19 F Ninik high school student steps of the stage. In the / dancer 21 M Santi college student evening the youths were 21 M Uji college student hanging out socializing and 22 M Zul dancer watching activities in the 24 F Ika part-time vendor main square. E. 7-05-06 26 F Zuwirna teacher in training Women 30s F Bu Rini seamstress 40 F Bu Desi teacher at a supplementary In the living room of a Muslim religious neighbour of the house I was school staying in. 50s F Bu Erlina Housewife / cigarette seller 50s F Bu Salina Snack seller F. 16-08-06 30s F Amelia Snack maker In the living room of one of Women 40s F Rosyani Housewife/stall the women. 40s F Wasriah owner 30s F Mega Coffee shop worker Housewife G. Men 18-03-06 40s M Pak Deni Sailor / shipping clerk 30s M Sayed Unemployed Around a table of a cafe in the Anti-narcotics worker 42 M Pak Fazrul main square. This group (with 40s M Said Fisher / sailor / handyman some variation) enjoys tea 50s M Roni Coffee shop worker and long discussions about 60s M Pak Ahmad Retired / tourism politics, geography, current H. Men 19-08-06 30s M Akhmad Factory worker events and gossip together on 50s M Pak Principal / coffee shop Sudirman owner many evenings. 60s M Subur Retired / handyman 40s M Ansur Pompong driver I. Civil 15-02-06 50s M Pak Elementary school I caught this group one principal / coffee servants Sudirman afternoon at a tea stall and 40s F Haja Taty shop owner Elementary school initiated a group discussion. teacher 30s M Hendri Civil servant in Kelurahan office 40s M Malik Tourism promoter / archives manager

91

One of the challenges in arranging group discussions was actually getting a group together and safeguarding against non-attendance (Bedford and Burgess 2003).

I realized early on that making appointments was not the most effective way to meet

people because their lives were often unpredictable. For example, I had planned to

meet with four youths once for tea next to the mosque but none showed up as the tides

were perfect to catch prawns, a key way for many islanders to supplement their

income. Also, as people became familiar with my presence, they assumed they could

meet with me later while they did various chores or watched a TV show they liked.

Alternatively, sometimes if I planned to hold a discussion later with several people, a

dozen curious friends and neighbours and their children might show up and the

planned discussion would not be possible. For these reasons, all of my discussion

groups were spontaneously planned and participants were gathered through a tactic

that I call ‘guerilla recruiting’. If I happened to be in a group that was already

gathered to socialize, I asked whether they could answer some questions before

bringing out photos or my laptop to show video footage. While guerrilla recruiting

and spontaneous discussion groups would not be suitable in many fieldwork contexts,

in the context of Pulau Penyengat this was a way to ensure participation and prevent

‘participation anxiety’, or the feeling of not knowing what to do, how to perform, and

the tendency to get intimidated by the formality of an interview. Spontaneous focus

groups also meant that I could simply piggyback on an existing social group that had

already developed a good rapport and enjoyed each other’s company while avoiding

class tensions.

Another challenge noted by Bedford and Burgess (2003) was the consensual

nature of many groups. This was true in the case of Pulau Penyengat, with participants

often agreeing with each other as a way of being pleasant according to social 92

convention. Furthermore, interviewees frequently told me what they thought I wanted to hear. It was important for me to keep the groups to a minimum in order to understand what people were saying as it was challenging to understand the informal

Malay slang used (I speak more formal Indonesian) and the in-jokes (Krueger 1994).

Over five people made it difficult for me to handle in Malay and recording was also difficult to hear people talking over one another.

One unavoidable challenge was the noise level, particularly in the square next to the mosque, where it was difficult to record the discussion. Not only is there a regular call to prayer, but all activity within the mosque is broadcast over huge speakers turned up to the maximum volume. Long prayer sessions can be heard at all hours. Many mosques in Indonesia regularly solicit donations, recruiting the most loquacious male villager to act as the master of ceremonies, greeting everyone who comes in the mosque, providing updates as to how much money has been collected, and filling in the empty time with chatter about the weather, planned projects and so on.

Because this mosque is an important part of Malay history and identity, it attracts Malays from Singapore, Malaysia, Sumatra and the Riau Islands, has a large staff, generates a large income, and has a busy program of activities. This translates into near constant noise. For the purposes of my fieldwork, this translated into a methodological challenge. As the main square is a key site for social activities,

particularly in the evenings when people are not working, it is the most suitable venue in which to meet people. Furthermore it was the most appropriate venue in which to

conduct interviews and have discussions with men as it is the most public place on the

island. 93

A final challenge was meeting old folks who were lucid enough to remember the Dutch, or at least Japanese colonial period on Pulau Penyengat. A person who

would remember the Dutch occupation as a child would have had to have been born

in around the mid-1930s or earlier and would be at least in their mid-70s today. To experience Dutch rule as an adult, a person would have had to have been born in the early 1920s and would be into their mid-late 80s now. Similarly, a person who would remember the Japanese occupation as a young adult would have had to have been

born in the mid-1920s and would be in their early 80s now. I was surprised to find only a few people whose memories stretched back to pre-Independence times and was unable to find enough elderly people to form a discussion group. This is unfortunate as a group dynamic would have been valuable in sparking memories and discussing long-term change that is key to this research. Discussions with the elderly were confined to four lucid old-timers who were children during the Japanese occupation.

3.5 Ethics In any research there will be sensitive aspects and in this section I discuss

several key ethical issues related to my research12. As a ‘First World’, ‘white’

researcher going to the formerly colonized ‘Third World’, there are potential power

dynamics that I had to be aware of and actively attempt to dissipate. Several scholars

have argued for research to be ‘decolonised’ in order to ‘break down the cross-

cultural discourses, asymmetrical power relationships, representations, and political,

economic, and social structures through which colonialism and neo-colonialism are

constructed and maintained’ (Howitt and Stevens 2005: 32). Skelton (2001: 90)

suggests that researchers recognize and take responsibility ‘for differential power

relations that may exist between the researcher and those participating in the research’

12 By the time the Institutional Review Board (IRB) was established in the Geography Department, I had completed the bulk of my fieldwork. 94

and choose methods that empower the researched and attempt to transform unequal

power relations. Others recommend ‘culturally safe’ research practices which

acknowledge how collective histories of power relations may affect individual

research encounters (Dyck and Kearns 1995; Kearns and Dyck 2005). In the context

of researching in Indonesia, I sought to dissipate power through several strategies.

Howitt and Stevens (2005) suggest that researchers have an ethical responsibility to learn about the research protocols in the place of research and respect

them. To be from the ‘First World’ and act as though the rules do not apply while in

the ‘Third World’ perpetuates a colonial dynamic. One of the ways to avoid ‘deep

colonizing’ is to follow the rules set by the host country (even if we do not agree with

them or find them inconvenient) and to seek formal and/or informal authorization in

the place of research (Howitt and Stevens 2005). While it is ethically and practically

straightforward to follow the rules of a small community and seek informal

authorization from leaders in the village, it is less clear how to proceed when seeking

authorization from the Indonesian state. Most researchers I have spoken with

informally have not researched in Indonesia with a research visa due to the time, cost

and effort it takes and the few benefits it yields, depending on the research projects.

Unless researchers need formal access to human subjects for medical/biological

purposes or to protected places such as national parks, most researchers use a tourist visa or a social visit pass to conduct research.

In an attempt to be ethical in my fieldwork, I went through the excruciating

process of obtaining an official research visa. This involved a complicated schedule of

visiting several times various offices around Jakarta with extremely short opening

hours. I was recommended to photocopy my passport, visa, research proposal, letter

from my university, letter from my sponsor in Indonesia and several other documents 95

ten times each, along with a dozen passport sized photos. These had to be taken to

various offices for processing. My topic was initially approved by the Indonesian

Embassy in Singapore, my sponsor in Riau and LIPI, the national research

organization that sponsors foreign researchers, and the National Immigration Office.

In order to renew my one-year visa I needed to go back to all of the offices in Jakarta.

After six months in Indonesia with my research visa, the National Immigration Office

denied my research proposal and made me change the topic of my thesis. The entire

process of securing a research visa cost almost S$1000, 20 percent of my fieldwork

budget and many weeks of driving around Jakarta and waiting in offices. In short,

although the process was inefficient, tedious and at times corrupt, I felt bound (at least

initially) to follow the rules the government had set for foreign researchers.

In Pulau Penyengat, there was the ethical issue of being just another (white)

researcher using the village to build my career. Many of the villagers I spoke with

mentioned previous researchers who had come to Pulau Penyengat13 and while I

sensed that villagers felt proud that their village was interesting and important enough to attract scholars, they expressed frustration that they were being used by foreign researchers with no benefit to themselves. Once required information was extracted, the researchers disappeared and the islanders did not see any of the research products and none were translated into Malay. Several of the villagers devised a scheme to enlist all visiting researchers to spend time teaching English to villagers as a way of giving back to the village. I felt obliged to provide occasional lessons to those who were interested and donated some English learning materials.

Shurmer-Smith (2004: 156) points out that power relationships are ‘not fixed or unidirectional, but shift and change according to how the researcher and researched

13 As Pulau Penyengat was a centre of Malay culture and power as the home of the Riau Sultanate, many researchers over the decades have come to Pulau Penyengat to research aspects of Malay history and culture. 96

are interacting with one another’. I found that while I was a ‘First World’ researcher

in the ‘Third World’ and was powerfully positioned, I found that at times I had little

power, as mentioned above in the context of government offices or in particular male

company. More significantly, I was in the unique position of living near to my field

site and could make frequent visits over a period of several years (see Table 2).

Moreover, my positionality as a ‘white’ ‘First World’ researcher living and studying

in Singapore complicated stereotypes of the rich white foreigner, particularly as a

number of friends and acquaintances from Jakarta, Tanjung Pinang and Pulau

Penyengat visited me in Singapore, several even staying at my apartment. This

disrupted traditional researcher-researched power relations and complicated our roles

in many ways. Those who came to my apartment were able to confirm all that I had

told them about my life in Singapore and to deconstruct some of their myths about

white people, educated people, etc. The fact that I live in a studio apartment far

smaller than most of the homes on Pulau Penyengat and have no car or even a motorcycle helped to place me more accurately in the wealth hierarchy on the island.

In other words, after seeing my living situation, I was no longer automatically seen as

being rich and powerful by Pulau Penyengat standards or Singapore standards.

Living so close to my field site and maintaining relationships with people

there brought about a particular ethical issue. As I became closer with members of the

community, it became an ethical necessity to share more personal aspects of my life. I

felt uncomfortable and unethical being welcomed into the community, learning from

them, and forming friendships without reciprocating in ways that I was clearly able to.

It was important for me to bring my husband to the island to assure his existence to

the villagers and to prove that I was spending time there with his blessing. I also

brought several friends to the island over the years, who also established some 97

personal connections with several villagers. Had I had not become increasingly

involved on a personal level, I might have been viewed with distrust and suspicion.

Opening aspects of my life to villagers served to humanize me and also showed villagers that my relationships with them are valuable enough to be included in my life. Again, I sensed this was necessary in the progression of my friendships and in the context of researching in a small community near to my home.

3.6 Summary In this chapter I described the methodological approach I took in my research.

I highlighted some of the main opportunities and constraints of conducting research as a foreign female researcher in Indonesia in general and in Pulau Penyengat in particular. I then examined existing literature on performance and performativity with regards to methodological approaches. I discussed how opportunities and constraints of the research context as well as previous studies affected the methods I selected before providing an overview of and justification for each. Finally, I discussed the ethical considerations of my research and how I handled them. Having detailed the methodological approach of this research, the next chapter will provide an overview of how national identity and ideology developed prior to Independence, followed by four empirical chapters examining four realms of villagers’ lives which are affected by nation-building strategies: work, education, and play.

98

Chapter 4 – Colonial Influences on Indonesian National Identity

4.1 Introduction Indonesian national identity has evolved over an extended period of time starting long before Independence was proclaimed in 1945. Due to its colonial history,

Indonesian national identity cannot be understood without examining the imperial powers which have controlled the territory. This chapter begins with an introduction to the Dutch and Japanese rule over Indonesia, briefly introducing how the groundwork for Indonesian identity was established in large part as a reaction to or in imitation of these powers. This section also examines how the post-Independent

Javanese elite can be considered as another imperial power to take control of the archipelago. This chapter demonstrates that many of the key features of Indonesian national identity including geographical boundaries, national philosophy, language, and conceptualizations of race have been influenced by various colonial powers.

4.2 Colonial occupations

4.2.1 The Dutch Period In order to understand the development of Indonesian national identity, it is helpful to have an understanding of the Dutch occupation of the region. The Dutch entered Indonesia initially as a trading partner and their level of control over the

archipelago was extremely uneven over time and space. However, through politicians’

speeches, school text books and national songs, the Indonesian state perpetuates the

idea that Dutch colonial rule lasted for 350 years.

Maluku, known as the ‘Spice Islands’, was the original focus of the Dutch,

who sought control over the spice trade in the 17th century. Economic activities

moved to Java in the mid-18th century when attention shifted from spice to the 99

cultivation of coffee, tea, sugar, indigo and tobacco (Tarling 2001). Due to a

concentration of economic interests, Java became the most intensely governed area of the Indies and where the highest number of Indonesians came into contact with the

Dutch state and its citizens. The nationalist movement was strongest in Java where the

Dutch faced great opposition to their oppressive and exploitative policies. For this reason, nationalists who emerged as leaders in Independence were primarily Javanese and tended to have had much experience interacting with the Dutch through education and employment.

The Dutch colony has a highly centralized bureaucracy based in Batavia, now

Jakarta. All decisions were made there and goods were primarily shipped through

Batavia’s port. Administrative decisions made in Batavia were carried out by Dutch officials posted across the archipelago, and indigenous peoples increasingly began seeking their livelihoods within the new political framework, working as contract labourers in the plantations of East Sumatra or as minor government officials. This administrative unity grew particularly important with the massive growth of government which took place from the 19th century, as is explored in Chapter 5. As the colonial endeavour became more and more complex, technical expertise and administrative efficiency became increasingly indispensible and a vast governmental apparatus began to take shape:

Departments of irrigation and transport, of trade and industry, of education and religion, began to grow and to intervene in the fabric of life in the colony, forming the feeling amongst non-Europeans in the colony that control of the governor-general’s palace in Batavia was the key to mastery of their affairs’ (Cribb and Brown 1995: 7).

This centralized bureaucracy with representatives stationed across the archipelago, changed how people in the Indies perceived the world around them and helped to foster a sense of ‘imagined community’. It also reinforced the local sense that all 100

decisions were made in Jakarta, a symbolic role that was perpetuated in the

archipelago after Independence when Jakarta was made the capital of the new nation.

The Dutch were divided as to how to manage the population of their colony.

In the second half of the 19th century, there were increasing calls from concerned

people back in the Netherlands for humane policies in the Indies that would end the cultivation system14 and would allow people of the Indies to be educated, while others felt justified in exploiting what they considered to be inferior humans (Taylor 2003).

Although the rate of educated indigenous people in the Dutch East Indies was far lower at every level of schooling than that of other colonies in Southeast Asia, a small number of bright and promising young men from the Indies were able to travel to the

Netherlands to receive a Dutch education. Scholars have credited these early foreign students with bringing the notion of independence from the Dutch in the form of modern statehood back to the Indies (Kahin 1952; Legge 1964).

The Dutch presence was uneven across the archipelago and local experience of the Dutch varied. While Dutch cruelty in the Indies is well-documented (Sukarno and Adams 1965; Pluvier 1972; Oostindie and Paasman 1998; Multatuli [1963]), there were also intermarriages and friendships between Europeans and Indonesians

(Mangkupradja, Evans, and McVey 1968). The cruel and humiliating aspects of the

Dutch Occupation have been emphasized for the political purpose of rallying citizens around the concept of Indonesian unity (Reid 1979).

4.2.2 The Japanese Period There is relatively little information about the period of the Japanese

Occupation of Southeast Asia because the Japanese military destroyed most of their war-related documents after the war (Akashi and Yoshimura 2008). While Japan’s

14 Primarily implemented in Java, the Cultivation System made it mandatory for 20% of all agricultural production to be devoted to export cash crops. While the Dutch earned huge profits from this system, it resulted in widespread famine and poverty in the late 19th century (Fasseur 1991). 101

occupation of Indonesia is notorious in national history, it is less well-known that

Japan was also an influence on people of the Indies even prior to World War II. In the early 20th century, Japan was seen as modern, cosmopolitan, technologically advanced

and a model of a successful and powerful Asian nation (Kahin 1952). The Japanese

defeat of Russia in 1905 had encouraged many Asians to question European superiority and emboldened many to imagine the possibilities of overthrowing their own colonial administration. To people of the Indies, Japan represented an Asian path towards modernity and a strong Asian alternative to the Dutch. As Sjahrir15 (1952:

125-6; see also Kahin 1952) wrote,

Dutch repression had the effect of turning the eyes of Westernized Indonesians away from the West and towards Japan. That country’s offer of autonomy in Korea in the mid-thirties naturally made a very favourable impression. Consequently, many middle-class and white-collar Indonesians looked to Japan for the education of their children, as well as for their cultural interests; it became the fashion to visit Japan on holiday.

In the final years before WWII, Sjahrir observed that Japan had increased

considerably in popularity, and that a large portion of the Islamic population of the

country was pro-Japanese:

…in the most remote kampongs [villages / neighbourhoods] people were firmly convinced of the superior power of the Japanese compared with the Dutch. Even the nationalists were inclined in that direction (Sjahrir 1952: 185).

Sympathy for Japan was a means of expressing antipathy towards the Dutch; at the same time, as Sjahrir pointed out, the subconscious causes lay in Asian feelings of inferiority, which ‘found their outlet in the glorification of the Japanese rather than in the more dangerous alternative of open hatred of the Dutch’ (Sjahrir 1952: 195).

15 Sutan Sjahrir was a key nationalist in the decades before Independence and the first Prime Minister of Indonesia. Sjahrir studied law in the Netherlands before returning to Indonesia to help establish the Indonesian National Party (PNI) in 1931. Rudolf Mrázek has written the most definitive work on Sjahrir in Sjahrir: Politics and Exile in Indonesia (1994). 102

The Japanese were initially greeted as Asian liberators from European rule. As

Kahin (1952: 102) has written, the ‘popular feeling that they came as liberators was

reinforced by their immediately allowing the display of the red and white Indonesian

national flag and the singing of Indonesia Raja, the national anthem, both of which

had been forbidden by the Dutch.’ Displays of Indonesian nationalism permitted by

the Japanese however, greatly varied depending on the location in the archipelago

(Goto 2003). In contrast to Kahin’s observations, residents of Pulau Penyengat saw

the Indonesian flag fly for the first time only after the Japanese defeat.

While the Japanese arrived in Southeast Asia ostensibly to liberate Asians

from European oppression, the underlying objective of their expansion was to secure

sources of raw materials and food to fuel the Japanese expansion and war effort.

Japanese economic policy stated that member states would sell their raw materials to

Japan and purchase Japanese manufactured goods, the same economic relationship as

Indonesians experienced under the Dutch (Goto 2003). Their occupation of Indonesia

lasted just 3.5 years (1942-45) but is remembered in Pulau Penyengat as being more cruel than the Dutch occupation.

Although Japan had been planning to expand into Southeast Asia for over ten years, their plans to administer its new territories were underdeveloped (Owen 2005:

303). Their leadership can be characterized as being concerned ‘more with mobilisation and control than with state-building’ (Tarling 2001: 288). As a result, experiences under the Dutch and Japanese left the new rulers of Indonesia more prepared for designing intricate structures for controlling its citizenry than for handling problems and managing resources.

The Japanese recognized the potency of the Indonesian nationalist movement and sought to harness it for their own ends, realizing that if nationalists’ goals were 103

not appreciated, there was a risk of a paralyzing level of anti-Japanese sentiment

developing. The Japanese soon identified themselves with the nationalist cause in

order to convince the population that policies that worked to Japan’s advantage did

not clash with Indonesian ambitions. The Japanese Military Government began to sponsor and organize nationalists into a movement that would bring them together into one organization, making it easier to expose them to Japanese propaganda and influence16 (Khoo 1977: 29). Most of the successful national leaders after

independence were favoured by the Japanese military and placed in positions of

leadership over Japanese-created mass organizations (Owen 2005). Sukarno and Hatta

were selected to lead Java Hokokai, the Java branches of the Japanese organization

that civilians over fourteen were required to join, which organized mass support of the

emperor and his war and for Japanese policies (Owen 2005: 305). The Republican

government retained the personnel and apparatus of Java Hokokai after the war. Both

Sukarno and Hatta made trips to Japan during this time and had much exposure to the

Japanese military and bureaucratic cultures. Significantly, unlike the Dutch, the

Japanese allowed nationalists to talk of an independent Indonesia, if not realize it.

Under the Japanese, the small minority of Indonesians who had received an

education under the Dutch saw their socioeconomic status rise tremendously (Kahin

1952). A great vacuum in upper administrative and technical positions was left by the

Dutch who had fled or were imprisoned, along with a substantial portion of the

Eurasian community and many Christian Indonesians who the Japanese suspected as

being Dutch sympathizers. Under Japanese rule, a relatively homogenous group of

Dutch-educated indigenous men were propelled into positions of leadership and

16 This organization was established in March 1943 and was called Pusat Tenaga Rakjat, or PUTERA. The Japanese placed Sukarno as the Chairman and Mohammad Hatta as the Vice-Chairman. 104

nearly all such personnel were promoted at least one or as high as three levels within

the hierarchy in which they were employed (Kahin 1952).

The assistance the Japanese gave to Sukarno and other Republicans over

competing nationalists was instrumental in the direction the independent nation went.

As Owen writes of the Republicans, they

operated in a thought-world created by the Japanese, did not propose democratic institutions and rejected a bill of rights advocated by Maria Ulfah Santoso, a Holland-trained lawyer. They persevered in the view that an independent country should regroup the territories of the former Dutch colony. None championed ethnic and regional interests. (Owen 2005: 307)

As Tokyo’s military planners anticipated defeat, they promised independence for

Indonesia in March 1945. They established a committee by hand-picking all sixty- four members to represent the major ethnic groups as well as Chinese, significantly excluding the Dutch. The Japanese selected delegates primarily from Java who had had connections to the Japanese during occupation. Sukarno and his group dominated the committee and were able to impose their view that ‘Indonesia’ should be united as a republic rather than as a monarchy, theocracy or federation (Owen 2005). This committee of Japanese-selected delegates also adopted Pancasila, the Five principles developed by Sukarno and others in June 1945 as the national philosophy.

While the spirit of local government began to emerge during the Dutch colonial period, the Japanese occupation radically expanded local government structure, extending the bureaucracy down to the level of the hamlet and sub-hamlet

(see Figure 4.1).

105

Figure 4.1 - Indonesia's bureaucratic structure This image shows Indonesia’s bureaucratic structure. The Kebupaten, or regency level, is equivalent to the Kota, or city, level and exists as a level of government in rural areas. In recent years, the Desa level has been replaced with Kelurahan. For Pulau Penyengat, this has meant going from having an elected village chief from the island to having a Lurah from outside the island, nominated at the Kota level.

Clusters of about a dozen homes formed household associations, or what they called tonarigumi (Prasetyo 2005). This administrative unit, renamed after Independence as rukun tetangga or RT, has remained until today, while it has since disappeared in

Japan (Norldholt 1997). In this way, ‘every household, neighbourhood association, hamlet and village, all of which had previously fallen outside the formal

administrative structure, were incorporated into the all-encompassing single administrative pyramid dominated by the Japanese army’ (Prasetyo 2005: 110). The 106

effect was a greatly expanded and highly centralized bureaucracy based on a military

structure, both of which have lasted until today.

4.2.3 The colonial Javanese? As examined in Chapter Two (section 2.4) many groups in Indonesia do not

feel emancipated by Indonesian Independence. Scholars have observed that

Independence from the Dutch and Japanese has lead to a Javanese colonial state, with

a relatively unchanged bureaucracy and economy now in the hands of a small

Javanese elite (van der Kroef 1957; Lagerberg 1980; Taylor 2003; Brown 2004; Reid

2004b, 2005). The Javanese have been criticized as a culturally dominant force that has imposed its values and norms onto the rest of the Indonesian population (Taylor

2003). As mentioned, parallels have been drawn between the leadership styles of the first two presidents and that of a Javanese sultan. For example, Crouch (1978) suggests that the Guided Democracy Period of the Old Order is a manifestation of

‘traditional’ politics, with Sukarno playing the role of sultan.

4.3 Geographical boundaries The geographical area of the Dutch colony foreshadowed the boundaries of

the new Indonesian state rather that adopting an ethno-cultural unit (Reid 2004a).

While the boundaries of Indonesia were initially ‘arbitrary and fortuitous, marking the spatial limits of particular military conquests’, they gradually became normalized as administrative units (Anderson 1994: 198). Unlike the British territories in the

Caribbean which were ruled as a multitude of separate administrations responsible to various mother countries, the Dutch chose to rule their Southeast Asia possessions as a whole and, ‘for all its legal complexity, the Netherlands Indies evolved as a single state apparatus’ (Cribb and Brown 1995: 7). In contrast, with no common administrative apparatus and no common language, the colonies in the Caribbean 107

developed into separate countries. Furthermore, the provinces of Indonesia (the

number has changed but is currently at 33) are derived from a spatial scale codified by

the Dutch in the Decentralization Law of 1922 (Benda 1966).

Not only physical boundaries were created by the Dutch but ways of

imagining the territory changed due to European influence (Owen 2005). While Java

has been known by that name since ancient times, early European traders at the port

of Samudera-Pasai named the entire island Sumatra, and visitors to the sultanate of

Brunei called the whole island Borneo (Taylor 2003).

While uniting many cultural and linguistic groups, some cultural groups’

traditional territories were split up by the Dutch East Indies. The most significant

example is the western archipelago of Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, the Kalimantan coasts, and the Riau Islands, which functioned as one world to its inhabitants (Taylor

2003). At a meeting in Europe, the Dutch and British divided the Malay world, a split

that would be maintained after Independence. Sukarno’s attempts to merge the British territory of Malaya (now Malaysia) with Indonesia were unsuccessful and the current borders closely reproduce those of the Dutch East Indies (McIntyre 1973).

After taking control of much of Southeast Asia, the Japanese re-drew the

Dutch colonial boundaries, creating three new states out of the single Dutch colony: the new state of ‘Syonan’ joined Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, the Riau Islands and

Singapore as its capital; Java was administered as a single state with its capital in

Jakarta; and ‘The Great East’ included Borneo, Sulawesi and the eastern archipelago with its capital in Makassar (Tarling 2001).

When the Dutch returned to Indonesia after the war with the intention of

regaining their colony and realized they would not be able to claim it, they lobbied to

prevent the archipelago from uniting as one country. Against the wishes of Sukarno 108

and his Republican supporters who sought to unite the archipelago as a republic, the

Dutch strongly supported the creation of separate states and a smaller Republic that

would be brought together in a federation to form the United States of Indonesia. The

Republic was originally to consist of Java alone but the Dutch eventually decided to include the islands of Madura and Sumatra. The Government of the Republic was to exercise control over its own territory (Java, Madura and Sumatra) while Sulawesi,

Bali, Kalimantan and the eastern archipelago would remain under Dutch control. In dividing up the archipelago, the Dutch sought to maintain a large degree of influence over foreign relations, defence, finance, and economics, in order to protect their massive economic interests17 (Khoo 1977; Taylor 2003). The crucial role the Indies

played in the Dutch economy guided the decision to push for the creation of the

United States of Indonesia as a united and independent Indonesia would threaten

Dutch economic interests.

In the first months of independence, Republicans merged the three states

created by the Japanese and dissolved the federal states called for by the Dutch, thus

restoring the boundaries to those of the Dutch East Indies. Sukarno often made a

historical justification for the boundaries of Indonesia, claiming in many speeches that

the boundaries of Indonesia were not a colonial creation but were in fact the

boundaries of the grand historical kingdoms of Srivijaya and Majapahit18, a claim that

has become part of the creation myth of Indonesia and is perpetuated in Indonesian

school books.

17 Before World War II, the Dutch East Indies supplied sizeable percentages of many of the world’s commodities: quinine (90%), pepper (86%), rubber (37%), coconut palm products (28%), tea (19%) and tin (17%) (Khoo 1977: 36). Furthermore, at its peak, one out of seven Dutch people derived income directly or indirectly from the Indies (Khoo 1977). 18 Srivijaya’s (7th-12th century) sphere of influence included Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula up to southern Thailand, parts of Borneo and a part of western Java. The core realm of the Majapahit kingdom (1293-about 1500) was in central and eastern Java. Its vassal states included Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, parts of Borneo and the eastern archipelago. While neither kingdoms’ spheres of influence match the current borders of Indonesia, many Indonesian nationalists invoke both as predecessors of the modern nation-state, provoking accusations of Javanese imperialism in many parts of the country (Tarling 2001). 109

4.4 National philosophy The struggle to link religiously and culturally diverse people in the archipelago resulted in the crafting of a unique national philosophy that sought to be inclusive and secular. In this section I will provide a brief overview of Indonesia’s key national philosophies as expressed in the Constitution of 1945, the state motto of

‘Unity in Diversity’, and the concept of Pancasila and how they emerged.

One of the main threats to Republican nationalism came from Muslim groups who insisted on the creation of an Islamic state. However, the Republican government, largely due to their secular Dutch education, wished to minimize the influence of Islam in the archipelago (Legge 1964). The parliamentary group that ratified the Constitution in 1945 decided the word ‘Allah’ (God in Islam) should be replaced with the more general ‘Tuhan’ (God), a term which was more acceptable to

Hindus. The Constitution of 1945 was written during the Japanese Occupation largely with the ideas of Dr. Supomo, an expert in adat [customary] law (Suryakusuma,

1996). Supomo sought to blend traditional indigenous and modern theories of state with a modern structure and an indigenous essence informed by local social structures, culture and mysticism. It dissatisfied many who sought the adoption of

Muslim law and argued that the constitution should explicitly include the words

‘Muslims should follow Islamic law’ (Effendy 2003; Friend 2003). Rather than allowing the practice of shariah law, the constitution retained family courts created by the Dutch that dealt with marriage, inheritance and divorce.

In response to the diversity of cultures and religions, the Republican government built inclusiveness into the official motto and doctrine of the country. The national motto of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, or ‘Unity in Diversity’, emphasized diversity

(Cribb and Brown 1995) and Pancasila, derived from Sanskrit (‘panca’ meaning five, 110

and ‘sila’ meaning principle), was crafted as the national doctrine 19. The principles of

Pancasila, invented by Sukarno in 1945, are broadly treated as the basis for

Indonesian politics, nationalism and statecraft (McCawley 1982; Budiman 1990). As

the official philosophical foundation of Indonesia, Pancasila was intended as a way to

unite the new nation and ensure political stability of Indonesia (Suryakusuma 1996).

Pancasila is credited with helping to smooth over differences between groups who had

competing visions for the archipelago, regardless of their ethnicity or political beliefs.

The five principles of Pancasila are as follows:

1. Belief in one and only God (Ketuhanan yang Maha Esa) – this point makes it mandatory for citizens to practise any religion, so long as it is monotheistic. This point was written to guarantee the concept of God for Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus by law in order to stress religious tolerance and preclude a Muslim state. While Hinduism teaches many forms of God, these forms represent aspects of a single, underlying power or Supreme Deity. This is a common interpretation of Hinduism in Indonesia and is the way that the Indonesian state has justified its inclusion in the first tenet of Pancasila. While Hindus are generally satisfied with this tenet, this has caused conflict with animists, who have been forced to convert (at least on paper) to Islam, Christianity, Buddhism or Hinduism.

2. Just and Civilized Humanity (Kemanusiaan yang Adil dan Beradab) – This requires humans to be treated with dignity and not tolerate oppression by their own people or by any other nation.

3. The Unity of Indonesia (Persatuan Indonesia) - pointing to the geographical entity of the islands that comprised Indonesia and emphasizing the identity of the people within it and their brotherhood. The principle embodies the concept of nationalism and the need to foster national unity.

4. Democracy guided by inner wisdom in the unanimity arising out of deliberations amongst representatives, or Representative Government (Kerakyatan yang Dipimpin oleh Hikmat Kebijaksanaan dalam Permusyawaratan/Perwakilan) – this refers to the good of having a government based on the participation of the people through elected representatives

19 An earlier incarnation of Pancasila, Pantja Dharma [The Five Duties], was a rather vague declaration of nationalist aspirations and devotion to the Japanese cause drawn up at the Chuo Sangi-in’s sixth plenary session (November 12-18, 1944). Never very popular, the Pantja Dharma was explicitly disavowed by Sukarno in favour of the Pantja Sila in his famous speech of June 1, 1945 to the Study Committee for the Preparation of Indonesian Independence. 111

5. Social justice for all Indonesians (Keadilan Sosial bagi Seluruh Rakyat Indonesia) – This principle calls for the equitable spread of social welfare and justice to the entire population.

Aside from Muslims who are unsatisfied with Pancasila’s lack of explicit support for Islam, others have critiqued Pancasila’s lack of dynamism. Michael Morfit critiques Pancasila as being an ‘extraordinarily static ideology’, lacking in any element of social or historical change:

There is no account of the past as the triumph of reason over superstition, as in the Enlightenment and in the political thinking of men such as Montesquieu at that time. There is no rejection of the past as a record of oppression and exploitation, as in Marx. Instead, the past is invoked only in the most general form and never with a sense of change or development. ... [it] can easily accommodate hierarchy as equality, and private ownership of the means of production as collective ownership. Abrupt revolutionary upheaval, incremental change, or no change at all are all consistent with the five principles. (Morfit 1981: 842-3)

Suryakusuma critiques the application of Pancasila:

As the president and the army are identified with Pancasila, any criticism of them can be interpreted as criticism of Pancasila and the state and is therefore considered subversive. (Suryakusuma 1996: 94)

Pancasila was invested with an almost sacred status by the ideologues in the New

Order20 (Bourchier and Hadiz 2003). In the late 1970s, it was made compulsory for all

political parties and social and religious organizations to acknowledge Pancasila as

their azaz , or sole foundation, and a national indoctrination program was launched to

inculcate Pancasila values in all citizens. The azaz policy became a law in 1985,

something Suharto felt was one of the great achievements of his presidency. With

political forces united under Pancasila, Suharto believed that Indonesia’s ideological

and religious conflict would come to an end.

20 For an excellent critical overview of Pancasila and how it was interpreted by the Old and New Orders, see Michael Morfit’s (1981) paper ‘Pancasila: The Indonesian state ideology according to the New Order government’, Asian Survey 21 (8): 838-851. 112

4.5 Language While Indonesian nationalism is influenced by European nationalist thinking,

it differs from European nationalist movements which rely on linkages of common

language, territory, traditions, and history (Legge 1964). In Indonesia’s case, the

common language of Malay was selected by various groups in the archipelago for various purposes. In the late colonial era, the Dutch selected Malay as the lingua franca for its neutrality and familiarity as a trade language to many people across the archipelago, which was spoken as a mother tongue by people in part of Sumatra and the Riau Islands21.

Malay became a central feature of Indonesian nationalism in the 1920s and a symbol of national unity. Its name was changed to Bahasa Indonesia [language of

Indonesia], it was declared the national language at the 1928 Indonesian Youth

Congress by nationalists in Java, forming a key part of the national ideology. The

Japanese further supported the use of Malay as the single operative language in the

archipelago, placing even more emphasis on the development of a standardized Malay

than the Dutch had in the preceding decade. The Japanese administration had initially

sought to transform Indonesians into loyal subjects of Japan (Goto 2003). They

sought to achieve this through a policy of ‘Nipponization’ which attempted to redirect

Indonesian loyalties towards Japan and to make them as culturally Japanese as

possible. As one strategy of ‘Nipponization’, the Japanese hoped that the population

would eventually all speak Japanese. This proved difficult to implement. The

21 The first monolingual Malay dictionary was compiled by Raja Ali Haji, a Malay scholar on Pulau Penyengat, out of a concern for the degeneration of Malay language and culture. In his essay ‘On sex, drugs and good manners: Raja Ali Haji as Lexographer’ Jan van der Putten provides a fascinating history and analysis of Raja Ali Haji’s dictionary (Putten 2002). Barbara Watson and Virginia Matheson examine Raja Ali Haji’s other writing in their essay ‘Islamic thought and Malay tradition: The writings of Raja Ali Haji of Riau’ (Andaya and Matheson 1980). For his contribution to Malay (and by extension, the national language of Bahasa Indonesia) Raja Ali Haji was declared a national hero. He is commemorated in the Riau Province section of Taman Mini in a giant concrete book upon which is written his famous poem, ‘Gurindam Duabelas’. 113

Japanese rulers eventually encouraged the use of Bahasa Indonesia as a lingua franca

to be used as the official language in government offices and schools with Japanese

being used for important words, such as ‘national’ rituals and songs, and, as mentioned earlier, many place names. Many place names were changed from their

Dutch names, such as Batavia, to their indigenous names, such as Jakarta.

‘Nipponized’ names were confined to the names of government ministries and

programs, and some place names, including in the Riau Islands22. Nationalist figures

such as Sukarno and Hatta who were given a voice and official position by the

Japanese during the occupation used Bahasa Indonesia on their radio addresses to the

people and then in their declaration of Independence on August 17, 1945.

4.6 Race and culture The racial categories and hierarchies introduced during the Dutch colonial

occupation were a significant part of the colonial strategy of domination and social

control and were maintained after Independence (Boellstorff 2002). Benedict

Anderson (1990) points out how races were reified through colonial census

categories, an approach that saw races as distinct, while homogenizing the differences

within racial categories. As the primary census classification, race was imagined by

colonial census-makers to be an unambiguous category to which each person had but

one clear place. Not only did colonial census-makers believe that all humans could fit

into and be represented by the census but they had no tolerance for ‘multiple,

politically “transvestite,” blurred, or changing identifications’ (Anderson 1983: 166).

Significantly, while the racial categories used in the census were colonially-derived

and imposed, rather than categories the indigenous population used for themselves

22 The island of Bintan in the Riau Islands, for example, was ‘Nipponized’ as ‘Bintanto’ and the small settlement of Nagoya on Batam is the only known place in Indonesia to retain its Japanese name (Field notes, Pak Aziz, 16 February, 2006). 114

and others, the colonized were forced to identify themselves as one of the races offered in the census.

The post-Independence government has inherited the colonial obsession with classification, which has come to form an integral part of Indonesian national identity.

Despite perpetuating these colonial racial categories, Sukarno often tried to downplay race in his constructions of nation, particularly when trying to convince citizens of his transmigrasi policies. In such cases, Sukarno would claim Indonesians were all immigrants at one time and were genetically related, thereby suggesting that race was a superficial category. Other times he would celebrate the racial differences as a fundamental part of the nation, the ‘Unity in Diversity’ that is the national motto.

However, it was Suharto that most capitalized on racial distinctions. His racial philosophies and strategies are made particularly clear in the Indonesia-themed park,

Taman Mini Indonesia Raya. In the 1970s, Taman Mini was built to celebrate the races that constituted the nation, presenting simplified amalgamations of each racial category in the form of a house, a heterosexual couple in adat [traditional] costume, a dance and other ‘benign’ cultural forms. In drawing together locality and ethnicity, several anthropologists have commented upon the ways in which Taman Mini reveals conceptions of culture, race and power (Pemberton 1994; Rutherford 1996; Spyer

1996). As Boellstorff (2002: 32) argues, these forms adopt colonial metaphors for ethnicity and culture while ‘literally containerizing and depoliticizing culture’. Spyer

(1996: 26) argues that in Taman Mini, ethnicity and locality are drawn together in a way that is incomprehensible without the ‘framework generated by the unifying agency of the state’. Within this framework, Indonesia is comprised of

‘ethnolocalities’, categories in which place and ethnicity are collapsed:

‘Javanese’ (with ‘Javanese’ language, custom, and cosmology) live in ‘Java’, the ‘Balinese’ (with ‘Balinese’ language, custom, and cosmology) live in 115

‘Bali’, the ‘Torajans’ (with ‘Torajan’ language, custom, and cosmology) live in ‘Torajaland’, and so on. (Boellstorff, 2002: 32)

Under the New Order, these ‘ethnolocalities’ became the only way in which citizens

could express difference and to be ‘Javanese’, ‘Balinese’, ‘Bugis’ and so on are

cultural authenticators of the state (Boellstorff 2002). In this way, the state struggle

for legitimacy works through the paradox that ethnolocality and adat are

‘ontologically prior to the nation, yet dependent on the nation for coherence’

(Boellstorff 2002: 32). Figure 4.2 shows two posters found in classrooms on Pulau

Penyengat which summarize Indonesian diversity. As will be examined in subsequent

chapters, the state has developed various, often conflicting, strategies over time that have served to homogenize members of racial communities, perpetuate racial

boundaries developed in colonial times, and even exaggerate these distinctions.

Figure 4.2 – Classroom posters of traditional costumes and houses of the Indonesian provinces

116

4.7 Summary Indonesia’s national philosophy and process of nation-building cannot be understood independently of its colonial history. National identity has developed in

large part both through direct borrowing from Dutch and Japanese ideology and

methods of governing and in reaction to their presence. Dutch and Japanese

influences on Indonesia were particularly strong and lasting because the Republican nationalist leaders who eventually gained power after independence were nearly all

Dutch-educated and cooperated to varying extents with the Japanese. Had the

Republicans not won control of the archipelago, the region would likely be radically

different in terms of geographical boundaries, language, and national philosophy.

Chapters Five to Seven turn to the empirical example of Pulau Penyengat to

investigate how villagers were encouraged to alter their behaviour in line with nation-

building strategies, specifically in the realms of work, education, and recreation. In

each chapter I briefly discuss pre-colonial influences on the nation to provide a

broader sense of continuity and perspective on Indonesian nationalism.

117

Chapter 5 – The Nation at Work

5.1 Introduction It is early on a Monday morning and the sun is low. Men and women stand in orderly rows in a yard outside their office building facing a gleaming white flagpole. They stand out from passersby as they wear closed shoes, military- style uniforms decorated with epaulettes, crests and badges that indicate differences in rank. Several people who wear more elaborate uniforms, including white gloves, stand facing the ‘troops’. The leader of the group stands on an elevated platform and speaks through a microphone conducting a solemn ritual while the employees stand silently at attention. An Indonesian flag is marched out, ritualistically unfolded, and hoisted slowly up the flagpole while the entire office staff sings a national song in unison. For the duration of the ritual, the office yard is temporarily transformed into a space of order, solemnity, hierarchy and a space of national significance. Meanwhile, outside of the yard daily routines continue as usual: traffic passes by noisily, food sellers push their carts by, and mosque activities can be heard. (Field notes, 13 February, 2006)

The above scenario is an ordinary sight in cities and villages across Indonesia and highlights several points about work and national identity. First, the active performance of national identity is a key component of the workplace. Second, it illustrates vast differences in citizens’ obligations to perform national identity in the workplace. Third, a social hierarchy based on work is created that recalls colonial experiences of exclusion and division according to one’s occupation. Finally, these rituals are performative in that they require not a single act but the repetition of scripted actions, the meanings of which are recognizable to participants and the audience (Nash 2000). Over time and through repetition, performances of national identity by different actors in various contexts are normalized. Such rituals emphasize the embodied nature of work and illustrate that employees can be understood not simply as ‘software’ but as ‘hardware’ as they can be corporeally moulded to embody the nation (Witz, Warhurst, & Nickson 2003). 118

While there are countless work situations in Indonesia, in this chapter I focus

on three categories of work23 found in Pulau Penyengat that help provide insights into how, and to what extent, national identity is performed in various workplaces. The first group of workers are employed by the state as office workers in the Kelurahan office [Village District], the PKK office [Pembinaan Kesejateraan Keluarga, or the

Committee for the Promotion of Family Prosperity], health care workers in the village clinic and as school teachers in the village schools. As one of the key places in which national ideology is instructed and performed, the workplace is an ideological zone in which the state attempts to shape the employees’ values and behaviour. In independent Indonesia, civil servants are placed in the unique role of embodying the nation to the populace and normalizing state rituals and values through the repetition of a recognizably ‘Indonesian’ set of actions.

The second group of workers consists broadly of those who work in the informal sector on Pulau Penyengat. They are not employed by the state or a company, and include rickshaw drivers, food sellers, coolies, those involved in maritime activities (fishing, catching prawns, boat building, etc.) and shop owners.

While these people have less exposure to the state and are less directly managed by the state than civil servants, they have been affected to varying degrees by changing state policies that have altered when they work, what they do or how they dress in particular contexts.

The third group of workers overlaps with the second group and consists of

‘volunteers’ who are mobilized by the state to work on various public works projects such as constructing roads, buildings or other community projects. While volunteering

23 I define work based on how it is understood on Pulau Penyengat: an activity from which one derives income and labour that is mandatory but unpaid. While some people on Pulau Penyengat earn money as dancers or musicians, their paid performances are infrequent and do not earn enough to constitute a full income. The dancers tend to have other jobs or study and view their dancing as a hobby. For this reason, I explore dance on Pulau Penyengat as a leisure activity in Chapter Seven, ‘The Nation at Play’. 119

labour in the form of neighbourly assistance is an embedded ideology in Pulau

Penyengat society, I focus solely on ‘volunteer’ work projects initiated by the state.

An analysis of these three groups of workers illustrates how and to what extent the arm of the state reaches people on Pulau Penyengat through work activities. This analysis does not seek to represent a full spectrum of the types of work in Indonesia as a whole and does not investigate how national identity is performed in other socially and economically important forms of work such as industrial labour, agricultural labour, corporate business, and so on, none of which exists on Pulau Penyengat.

Furthermore, although there are people from Pulau Penyengat who work in factories in Batam, resorts in the province or in Bali or on ships in the region, I have chosen to limit my focus to occupations of people residing on the island itself.

This chapter begins with a review of literature that examines the connections between work and identity. Through an investigation of the three types of work mentioned above, this chapter illustrates how workplace performances have and have not changed over the decades since Independence by looking specifically at workplace uniforms, workplace national rituals, and workplace organizational hierarchies. I examine for whom these standardized national work performances are mandatory and for whom they are not. This chapter also examines how employees ignore, reject or assign alternate meanings to mandatory performances of national identity and how some non-state workers have enthusiastically imitated versions of state spaces and performance for a range of purposes.

5.2 Work and identity Work is an important context in which various identities including gender,

class, race and national identities are formed, maintained and challenged. However, as

has been observed by Andrew Sayer (1994), studies of work tend to be focused on 120

‘hard core’ economic and political discussions of capital and class, with little attention

paid to cultural policies. This focus on the economic and political side of work is

particularly evident in the literature on Southeast Asia. Joel Kahn (1998:1) is right to

remind us that ‘contrary to the impression generated by the majority of observers of contemporary Southeast Asia – of a region whose peoples are dedicated entirely to the single goal of economic development – matters cultural are never very far down anyone’s agenda’. While not to deny the important economic aspects of work, a cultural and geographical analysis can provide insights into how national ideology

affects workers in an embodied way.

A small number of geographers have written about work from a cultural,

rather than an economic or political perspective to examine the performance of

identities in the workplace. The most significant and thorough contribution to date is a

special issue of the journal Environment and Planning D: Society and Space

published in 1994 that examines the issue of workplace performances of various

identities. In this issue, Linda McDowell and Gill Court (1994) examine workplace

performances of gender in the context of British merchant banks, drawing on Butler’s

theorization of performance and performativity to link gender identity and economic

process. They examine how professional women are embodied and / or represented as

‘woman’ in the workplace in ways that constitute an integral part of selling financial

advice, making money and attaining power. For these women, work is a performance

in which individual criteria of appearance, personality, and deliberate self-

presentation are key aspects of career success. As discussed in Chapter Two, while

citing Butler in their theorization of performance, Lise Nelson (1999: 344) argues that

their analysis more accurately employs an understanding of performance that is closer

to Goffman’s (1959) as they read intentionality and conscious action into subjects 121

who strategically construct or fabricate their workplace identities and perform them

through daily practice.

In the same issue of Society and Space, Phil Crang (1994) writes about the

workplace geographies of display in a restaurant in southeast England. Through an

examination of the performative geographies of display in waiting work, Crang argues

that such workplace geographies as surveillance, display and location help to

constitute the character of employment. Crang’s formulation adopts Goffman’s (1959)

approach, which assumes a knowing subject who is conscious of performing a role

and strategically performs for personal gain. Similarly, Witz, Warburst and Nickson

(2003) highlight the importance of corporeal dimensions of the emotional labourer in

the service industry and argue that there are new modes of embodiment that are produced and valorized in workplace performances. They argue that employees in the service sector are ‘increasingly regarded by employers as an integral – literally animate – component’ of workplace performances (Witz, Warburst and Nickson

2003: 34). While acknowledging the knowing and strategic subject theorized by

Goffman, they also turn to the work of Hochschild (1983: 7) who explains emotional labour as being not only ‘the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display’ as Goffman proposes but insists on a greater depth of feeling in the performers. He suggests that beyond the bodily display, workplace performances function to imply a depth and authenticity of feeling possessed by the inner-self.

Although little has been written on the interrelatedness of work and national- identity, work is frequently utilized by states and individuals for nation-building purposes. There are numerous examples of nationalist leaders or states using certain types of work in an attempt to change people’s behaviour, to mobilize support, and to 122

reach political goals. A potent example of national identity being explicitly linked to work can be seen in late colonial India. In the decades before Indian independence,

Mahatma Gandhi encouraged the populace to engage in particular types of work to push his nationalist agenda (Chakrabarty 2006). Significantly, for Gandhi the actual doing of this work was a symbolic performance as well as a strategy to bring benefits that would change conditions for the populace and ultimately bring independence.

Gandhi’s nationalist vision constructed a hierarchy of work with village activities at the top. The work activity Gandhi felt best represented his nationalist vision was in charkha (spinning wheel) and khadi (home-spun cotton textile). Aside from freeing

India from its dependence on British textiles, the process of creating khadi was a political statement that allied one to Gandhi’s nationalist vision (Parekh 1997).

Gandhi encouraged everyone to spin as a display of sacrifice and commitment to his brand of nationalism:

Every Congressman has to become a master spinner and master weaver. … He has to spin for the sake of the country. … Every Congress office should become a model laboratory and spinning and weaving institute for the organization of villages. (Harijan, 30 December, 1939, CWMG, Vol. 71, pp. 55-6, cited in Chakrabarty 2006: 144)

In this way, engaging in the work of spinning thread also served to break down social hierarchy.

The relationship between work and national identity is highly dependent upon time and place. For example, during WWII women in the United States and Britain were called upon to serve their nation by working in munitions factories to support the war effort. While engaging in this type of ‘men’s’ work was seen as the ultimate

(female) expression of national identity and patriotism in wartime, it was seen as quite the opposite after the war when the employment of servicemen in civilian jobs was 123

the national priority and women holding onto to ‘men’s jobs’ were seen as unpatriotic

(Milkman 1987; Wise 1994).

Work is relevant to this thesis in its inherent everydayness, or what Michael

Billig (1995: 6) calls ‘banal nationalism’ to describe the collections of ideological

habits which ‘reproduce established nations as nations’. Billig argues that nationalism

does not strike only on extraordinary occasions such as during wars. While

nationalism can become particularly inflamed in wartime to create a temporary

feverish outbreak, such crises depend on existing ideological foundations that are

maintained in less spectacular ways. Between crises, nation-states continue to exist and ‘are reproduced as nations and their citizenry as nationals’ on a daily basis (Billig,

1995: 6). Billig makes the important point that while banal nationalism occurs every

day, it is not innocent as it reproduces institutions and values in a way that disguises

their constructedness and resists critique.

Very little scholarship has examined how work in its various forms is related

to nation-building or to issues of identity and work in pre- or post-independent

Indonesia. Work in an Indonesian context has generally been examined in terms of subjugation, victimization, exploitation and oppression. Even in colonial times, work became a site of contestation over human rights and sparked heated debate in the

Indies and the Netherlands over Dutch policies. The miseries and indignities of work under the Cultivation System are documented as early as in Max Havelaar, the famous politically-charged novel by E. D. Dekker published in 1860 that challenged

Dutch policy towards workers in the Indies. Vedi Hadiz (1997) examines the emergence of the Indonesian industrial working class in his book Workers and the

State in New Order Indonesia. Taking a comparative approach, Hadiz examines labour movements and industrialization in various national contexts, arguing that the 124

later a country undergoes industrialization, the greater the obstacles facing the

emerging industrial working class in organizing labour movements. In the case of

Indonesia, Hadiz contends that the mobility of capital, a powerful state, strict labour

controls, and the political exclusion of large segments of society all serve to constrain

labour movements and weaken workers’ bargaining power, making industrial workers

increasingly vulnerable to exploitation (Hadiz 1993, 1994). Many scholars have also

examined the civil service in Indonesia as an organization rife with corruption and

inefficiency (Besley and McLaren 1993; Buchori 1994; Quah 2003). Others have

examined the general trend towards bureaucratization in Indonesia and the rapid

increase of government workers at various times in Indonesia’s history and the

rationalization of the workforce (Evers 1987). However, despite the elaborate set of

rituals and hierarchies in the workplace there has been little analysis of them or of the

embodied nature of work.

One significant way in which scholars have begun to see work as embodied has been through analyses of workplace uniforms. Uniforms function as a ‘symbolic declaration that an individual will adhere to group norms and standardized roles and has mastered the relevant group skills’ (Joseph 1986: 66-67). As a result, the uniform overtly marks identities and ‘suppresses individual idiosyncrasies of behaviour, appearance, and sometimes physical attributes’ creating a visual homogeneity and stripping citizens of their individuality (Joseph, 1986: 68). The ‘devices used by ordinary citizens to express their attitudes are denied to the uniform wearer – political buttons, religious insignia, and symbols of individual esthetic or ludic preferences’

(Joseph 1986: 67).

The wearing of uniforms creates the appearance of order and discipline within the populace as well as a recognition of and implicit compliance with the state’s 125

agenda. They are a ‘group emblem’ for those outside the organization ‘who use them

as a means of convenient classification, as a way of knowing who does what, of what

role a person performs’ (McVeigh 2000: 80). The uniform is not only ‘an emblem but also a reminder of the behaviour appropriate toward this emblem; it becomes a third

factor in the interaction between wearer and other’ (Joseph 1986: 66). Working

through the bodies of its citizens, the Indonesian state expresses its strength to its

populace in the sheer numbers of uniforms, giving the appearance of massive support

for the state and the nation it envisions. Because uniforms are externally recognizable

markers which are easily identified from a distance, they facilitate a sense of

Foucauldian surveillance of wearers. The examples of Gandhi, American and British

women during WWII, and uniforms are relevant to the ideas developed in this chapter

in how work is intertwined with national identity. Each example discussed above

illustrates how work can be analysed, not as simply a disembodied economic activity,

but as a realm in which national identity is reproduced and challenged through

performance.

5.3 State workers State workers constitute the adults who are most targeted by the Indonesian

state to perform in particular ways that embody national ideals. Their weekly work

schedules are filled with mandatory participation in rituals and activities, each of

which require a complicated set of uniforms. In the following sub-sections, I first

provide a brief historical overview of the development of state jobs in Indonesia,

contrasting pre-Independence experiences of state employment opportunities with the

post-Independence period. I then examine how civil servants perform national identity

in the workplace through uniforms, workplace ceremonies (Upacara Bendera and

Senam Pagi Indonesia), and everyday office culture. 126

5.3.1 Pre-Independence work While the Dutch empire relied upon mass labour of the colonized, the range of work options available was extremely narrow, limited primarily to agricultural and domestic labour. However, in response to the economic troubles brought on by the

Depression of 1930, the Dutch somewhat reduced the number of European officials on the payroll in the Indies to cut costs and replaced them with poorly paid locals

(Hadisumarto 1974). However, unlike in British India where a large part of the bureaucracy was made up of Indians (Tarling 2001), comparatively few administrative or professional positions were held by Indonesians. While a quarter of a million indigenous people were working in the civil service by 1928, they were placed in largely low levels of the colonial bureaucracy (Cribb and Brown 1995).

Those that were able to rise in the Dutch bureaucracy were resentful of the higher salaries their European counterparts earned as well as the social hierarchy that barred natives from fashionable clubs and swimming pools (Cribb and Brown 1995).

During the Japanese occupation, Indonesians working in the bureaucracy were seen as an opportunity for the Japanese to win allies who would potentially support

Japanese policy. As mentioned in Chapter Four, the fine-grained administrative structure created many positions for Indonesians to join the bureaucracy. Furthermore, with the absence of the Dutch, a great number of Indonesians were installed in senior positions of responsibility in the administration for the first time (Khoo 1977; Cribb and Brown 1995). After expelling or imprisoning the Dutch, the Japanese filled some of the administrative positions themselves, promoted Indonesians who were already working in Dutch offices, and hired many Indonesians. This widespread administrative experience helped to assure nationalists that they could manage the administration of an independent Indonesia (Kahin 1952). 127

The Japanese had attempted to inculcate the local people working in the administration with their ideology through the introduction of various workplace ceremonies and rituals (Raben 1999). For employees in Japanese-run offices, the work day was highly regimented. Roll call was taken three times per day. Displays of

Japanese identity and of loyalty to the emperor were frequent and mandatory. Junior employees were made to bow deeply to their Japanese superiors in an overt display of

Japanese culture that served to maintain a rigid workplace hierarchy with the Japanese positioned at the top. Employees were made to sing nationalistic songs in Japanese that celebrated the divinity of the emperor and paid tribute to Japanese superiority.

Formal flag ceremonies were held in the workplace using the Japanese flag and, later in the occupation, the Indonesian flag in some places as a way to placate the increasing strength of the nationalists. The Japanese also introduced regular group callisthenics to the workplace, an activity that left a lasting impression on nationalists and was carried out long after Independence as a way to unify employees, teach them to follow instructions and instil in them a sense of common purpose (Raben 1999).

These workplace activities were peppered with phrases in Japanese that Indonesian employees were expected to learn. Indonesians working in the bureaucracy under the

Japanese were particularly targeted for activities of indoctrination, a group that continued to be the primary target of nationalization strategies after Independence.

5.3.2 Post-Independence work Following the Japanese, the Sukarno administration saw the civil service as a key site in the production of national identity and continued many of the workplace rituals established under Japanese rule. Civil servants served as the primary actors in national rituals and were the workers which had the most direct contact with the official version of national culture constructed by the state. Civil servants were meant 128

to embody national ideals such as discipline, order, and progress as well as the sacred

aura of the revolution and government institutions were perceived by the state as beacons of modernity, order and dignity in the chaos of daily life in Indonesia. This sacred aura around the state has meant that many Indonesians held the civil service in

high esteem to the extent that, upon receiving their civil servant number, the unique

number issued to each government employee upon being hired, it has been

documented that many break down in tears (Siegel 1997).

After Suharto took over the presidency, the government bureaucracy was

greatly expanded. Evers (1987) points out the ‘runaway bureaucratization’, or rapid increase in the number of government civil servants in Southeast Asia, particularly in

Indonesia, that has escaped the notice of scholars. In the 1970s, the number of government employees in Indonesia grew by more than 1.5 million, or almost 400 percent24. By 1980, there were around 13.9 civil servants for every thousand people,

up from 1.8 per thousand in 1930 and 3.7 in 1950 (Evers 1987: 672).

The sharp increase in bureaucratization had two significant effects. First, the

Suharto regime used the civil service as an instrument of social and political control that brought regular citizens into closer contact with the state. It ‘inculcated an institutional culture of compliance in the bureaucracy whereby loyalty was rewarded with security of tenure, pension rights and access to development funds’ (Rohdewohld

2003: 264). Second, the increased bureaucratization led to a sharpening of work-based

social hierarchies. In contrast to Gandhi’s or Sukarno’s attempts to create an

egalitarian system in which all individuals were respected equally, policies of the

New Order demanded respect from those in lower ranks. The increasingly hierarchical

and patrimonial working culture that emerged in the New Order is well illustrated in

24 This figure includes only the administration proper. As Evers (1987: 666) explains, ‘if we add all those whose livelihoods depend in one way or another on the government budget, the rate of bureaucratization is even more sensational’. 129

Independence Day celebrations (Brietzke 2002). During the Old Order, Independence

Day was celebrated as a lively event with mass participation with political elements

(Hatley 1982). All walks of life would gather in their villages and listen to speeches by local officials, various political parties and village heads, and villagers would socialize, gamble, play games and eat in a relaxed carnival-like atmosphere. In contrast, Independence Day during the New Order saw the expansion of the formal, ceremonial activities to which only civil servants and those who belonged to state organizations were invited, and their presence was mandatory. In the Riau Islands, rather than many small celebrations in each town and village, the ceremony shifted to

Tanjung Pinang. Older residents of Pulau Penyengat recalled staying on the island for all of the festivities in the past (Field notes, 17 August, 2006). As officials from the village were sent to Tanjung Pinang to join mass civil servant ceremonies, the village and its residents were marginalized from the events.

5.3.3 Uniforms For Indonesians, uniforms are a daily sight. They are highly visible markers of national identity and instantly communicate the wearer’s job and rank. Civil servants’ uniforms are a powerful symbol of the Indonesian state. The study of state uniforms reveals the state’s micromanaging style and reflects changing official notions of national identity. It also aids in understanding how state and non-state workers feel about particular uniforms and why.

While Gandhi’s nationalist movement supported a policy of national dress as a counter-identity to British rule which found its expression in the khadi (Nordholt

1997b), no similarly symbolic dress emerged in colonial Indonesia. In contrast to

India, indigenous dress in the Indies represented non-progress and nationalists overwhelmingly favoured Western suits (Nordholt 1997). Notably, the Republicans 130

did not reject Dutch clothes and many aspects of Dutch work culture and structure.

Siegel (1997) argues that clothes were fetishized in the Indies as they were taken to represent one’s politics to a high degree. The strong commitment to wearing uniforms, despite the lack of cohesiveness across nationalist and revolutionary

organizations and cloth shortages, indicates the important link many Indonesians

perceived between dress and national identity in the struggle for Independence, a link

that has continued into the present.

During the Japanese occupation, Indonesian society witnessed an

unprecedented uniform fever in which new ideals were formulated through dress

codes (Frederick 1997). McVeigh (2000) has noted that Japan must be one of the

most uniformed societies in the world, a feature which was replicated in occupied

Indonesia where, paralleling the military, the Japanese introduced different uniforms

to visually mark the body to denote occupation and rank. The military regime sought

to mobilize mass support and thought this could be achieved in part through uniforms.

Following Japanese styles, Republican army officers stopped wearing neckties, using

the open collar instead (Danandjaja 1997). During this time, the peci, the black velvet

cap worn by working class Muslim men, became the widespread symbol of national

unity. When Sukarno proclaimed Independence, he appeared in a white suit, no tie

and a peci25 (Figure 5.1a).

25 This look is replicated in the uniforms worn for the weekly flag ceremony in schools, as examined in Chapter Six. 131

Figure 5.1 – Sukarno proclaims Independence, August 17, 1945; Sukarno in a self-styled military uniform; Sarong, traditionally worn by many South and Southeast Asians (from left: a, b, c)

[source of 5.1a: Sukarno and Adams (1965); source of 5.1b Pender (1974)]

After Independence, Sukarno’s administration continued the Japanese culture

of uniforms in the government workplace. State uniforms under the Old Order had a

revolution-ready, military flavour. As commander-in-chief, Sukarno’s self-styled

uniform was elaborately militaristic, verging on the theatrical. Much to the military’s

anger, Sukarno, who had not served in the military, donned ‘phantasy uniforms with

five stars on his shoulders and loaded with medals’ (Sundhaussen 1982: 556; cited in

Friend 2003: 69) (Figure 5.1b). Sukarno publicly rejected the sarong, the cloth wrap

traditionally worn by many South and Southeast Asians, for daily wear as he felt it

was the clothing of servants (Figure 5.1c). Suits under the Dutch afforded ‘the native’

more rights and could command obedience from the Indonesian people (Sukarno and

Adams 1965), a stance that Sukarno continued during his presidency.

During Suharto’s presidency there was an increase in the bureaucratization

and rationalization of the workplace. Government uniforms became more regimented,

the weekly schedule of wearing uniforms became more complex and the number of

uniforms greatly increased (Danandjaja 1997). It has been suggested that the

proliferation of uniforms in Indonesia is linked to the fact that one of Suharto’s

cronies owned a uniform factory and Suharto directly profited from increasing the 132

number of uniforms (Nordholt 1997). Civil servants, which include government

employees at all levels including Kelurahan, Kecamatan, Walikota, Bupati,

provincial, and national, as well as bank employees, teachers, and state university

faculty wore uniforms that made visible their rank and branch (Owen 2005) and were

given a detailed schedule of clothing they must wear on particular days. The standard

uniform consisted of what was commonly known as a ‘safari suit’, a matching tan

shirt and pants set for men and skirt for women (Figure 5.2b). All uniforms introduced

were (and continue to be) paid for by the employees themselves.

‘Native’ clothing found a place in Suharto’s national strategy and the national

formal dress for civil servants became a Javanese-style batik shirt. The formal

national uniform during the New Order consisted of the Korpri batik (Korps Pegawai

Republik Indonesia, the ‘Indonesian Civil Service Corps’), which was a long-sleeved

shirt made with a blue batik beringin [banyan] tree pattern (Figure 5.2a). It was

mandatory to wear the Korpri batik on the 17th of every month to mark the

anniversary of Indonesian Independence, for special national ceremonies, and in such

events as the visit of a dignitary. While in keeping with the uniformization of the Old

Order, these uniforms marked a shift from the military style supported by Sukarno to

include a reference to ‘traditional’ culture. This shirt became a notorious symbol of

the Suharto regime and after he was forced to step down in 1998, many civil servants

gave their Korpri batik to the poor.

The Korpri batik was a source of discontent among civil servants from Pulau

Penyengat who felt it did not represent their sense of the nation. Some felt it was

overtly Javanese rather than ‘Indonesian’.

The national clothes are Javanese because we have Javanese presidents. If we had a president from Riau maybe civil servants would wear songket and baju kurung... or go naked like the orang asli [indigenous people]! (Pak Acay, 17 August, 2006) 133

We need a national uniform, some clothes that all Indonesians can wear. ... we need to show unity... Batik has already become Indonesian, not just Javanese. ... but the Korpri batik is not a symbol of Indonesia, but a sign of the Suharto era. (Pak Sudirman, 10 May, 2006)

In addition to the safari suit and Korpri batik, Senam Pagi Indonesia [the

weekly state callisthenics, literally Indonesia’s Morning Exercise] uniforms were

introduced during the New Order. Where civil servants once wore their work clothes

for morning exercises, in the New Order state track suits were introduced (but paid for by the employees themselves) (Figure 5.2d). Similar to the safari suit, these uniforms immediately identified a state worker, although they were not as widely imitated as the safari suit was by people working in the private sector.

Figure 5.2 - Old Korpri batik, safari suit, new Korpri batik, civil servant track suit (from left: a, b, c, d)

As mentioned, the daily office uniform during the New Order was the safari suit decorated with a Korpri pin in the shape of the Garuda Pancasila, the national

crest of the garuda, or mythical eagle of Hindu origins (Figure 5.2b). When university

lecturers were unhappy with the government, they would ‘show their resentment by 134

not wearing the safari shirt when it is required’ (Danandjaja 1997: 257). To others,

however, the safari suit brought social prestige and was adopted by some men

working in the private sector, particularly when meeting with government officials.

Danandjaja (1997: 258) wryly observes that wearing the safari suit with Korpri pin frequently had the power to ‘ward off evil “spirits” in the form of certain individuals

… like policemen, soldiers, and customs officers, who are inclined to practise

extortion. … Thus the safari suit and the Korpri button have the mystical power to

ward off these evil powers.’ The strategic use of the safari suit by both civil servants

and non-civil servants reveals a conscious subject who is aware of the power the

uniform commands. Clearly, the safari suit does more than simply identify people

working for the state – the uniform symbolizes the power and reach of the state.

Furthermore, it perpetuates the social hierarchy that positions uniformed civil servants

above other citizens.

Sepatu kantor [closed office shoes] have been an important component of civil servants’ office attire since Independence. While most Indonesians wear sandals

(Figure 5.1c), civil servants are often the only employees (at least in villages and smaller towns) who wear closed shoes every day. This aspect of civil servants’ uniforms has had an impact on the physical landscape of Pulau Penyengat. The main

square on the island was covered with grass until 2006. As Pulau Penyengat has taken

on greater significance for Kepri, the square has been used by the provincial

government to host visiting dignitaries and civil servants. While watching a dance

performance on the stage in the square after a rain storm, provincial officials noticed

that the ground had become muddy and the visitors’ leather sepatu kantor were

messy. Later that week, the provincial government arranged for bricks to be brought to the island and the grassy square was quickly paved over to avoid future visitors 135

muddying their shoes while watching a dance performance. While some Pulau

Penyengat residents feel that this makes the square look tidier and more modern, most

residents complain that the paving has made the square hotter, particularly since a

large mango tree was cut down in the process of paving. This example illustrates how

class differences are manifested in civil servants’ uniforms and how these differences have changed the physical landscape in Pulau Penyengat.

To many non-Javanese across the archipelago, the Korpri batik was a symbol of Javanese imperialism disguised as national culture and imposed on them without their consent. Many civil servants have stories about intentionally forgetting to wear their Korpri batik on required days or being absent from ceremonies when the Korpri batik was required, demonstrating that the Korpri batik inspired small acts of

resistance in many civil servants26. This small but symbolic act of defiance against the

dominant power can be understood in terms of James Scott’s (1985) ‘everyday form

of peasant resistance’ and as a ‘weapon of the weak’. The refusal to ‘perform’ reveals

an awareness in civil servants’ understanding of national identity in the form of the

Korpri batik as a sort of performance, rather than as a deeper, naturalized identity.

This display of intentionality is in line with Goffman’s conceptualization of

performance: they are thinking subjects who strategically perform an identity (or, in

this case, refuse to perform an identity) in a particular context. At the same time as

conscious and strategic forms of resistance, there is also a less conscious performative

element at play. Through repetition, the wearing of uniforms has become normalized

to the extent that while some uniforms may be resisted on occasion, the underlying

tactic of wearing uniforms to represent the state is not challenged.

26 These stories are likely exaggerated in light of the fall of Suharto. 136

Suharto’s fall ushered in widespread decentralization and affected the state

workplace in two key ways. First, where 90 percent of civil servants in 1999 were

employees of the central government, this number fell to 25 percent after

decentralization laws came into effect with the overwhelming majority employed at

the Kabupaten/Kota (district) level (Rohdewohld 2003: 260). Second, there were attempts to integrate provincial culture into the workplace. Third, due to the political baggage of the Korpri batik, it was replaced soon after the fall of Suharto with a less overtly Javanese national batik of a different colour and pattern (Figure 5.2c).

Civil servants on Pulau Penyengat give the new batik positive reviews:

The new batik is very smart ... it is worn for the big national ceremonies and important dates: the 17th of every month. (Pak Sudirman, 10 May, 2006)

This batik is more national and less Javanese. (Yudi, 25 April, 2008)

Many civil servants in Pulau Penyengat said that they most enjoyed being able

to wear baju Melayu [traditional Malay clothes] on certain occasions rather than

batiks, as will be discussed below.

In Kepri, the state has introduced strategies to enhance ‘Malayness’ in state workplaces around the province, including on Pulau Penyengat. Since the formation of Riau Islands Province, it is mandatory for civil servants – regardless of ethnicity or

religion – to wear baju Melayu [traditional matching 2-piece Malay clothing] for men

and baju kurung [tradition long skirt and tunic] for women to work each Saturday and

during the entire month of Ramadan.

137

Figure 5.3 - Government employees wearing baju Melayu and baju kurung at work (from left: a, b, c, d)

As can be seen in Figure 5.3, baju Melayu is interpreted differently among

employees and there is not yet an official interpretation to which employees must

conform. The women in Figure 5.3a are wearing traditional baju kurung sets, a more

conservative interpretation. Likewise, the man in Figure 5.3c is wearing the traditional

pyjama-style set, with a formal woven songket over top. The other men (Figures 5.3b

and 5.3d) wear pyjama-style sets or just a baju Melayu top with office pants on the

bottom. One woman explains her interpretation of what clothing was expected to be

worn:

Baju kurung is traditional Malay clothes for ladies. See - a long skirt, and a long top... matching cloth and tudung [head scarf].

A younger employee had a more inclusive interpretation of baju Melayu:

This is Malay style – long sleeves and long shirt... no t-shirt, no jeans no short skirt. ... and a tudung. ... That is not mandatory but it is more Malay to wear it.

Civil servants felt that wearing Malay clothes one day a week at work was a

positive move that showed the state had sensitivity to and respect for Malay culture.

These Malay clothes are our culture. We represent the Malay people in Kepri … we should wear Malay clothes … it’s Dunia Melayu [the Malay world], right? (9 September, 2006)

I think they are beautiful. ... Because it’s a new policy, we just wear our own baju kurung – there is no baju kurung uniform yet… maybe next year we will have a uniform, I don’t know. ... Maybe it will be khaki like our regular uniform. (9 September, 2006) 138

However, some comments expressed some reservations about wearing baju Melayu:

I’m glad we only have to wear them on Saturdays … they are very hot … I always sweat a lot wearing Malay clothes. (9 September, 2006)

On Saturdays I get dropped off at work by my husband. I cannot ride a motorcycle well wearing baju kurung. (9 September, 2006)

The last comment reveals that gender is a dimension in the ‘ethnic’ uniform

policy. In contrast to regular state uniforms in which little gender distinction is made,

wearing baju kurung recalls traditional gender roles and somewhat constricts

movement in women, making some everyday activities, such as commuting to work

on their motorcycles, problematic. Some scholars have pointed out that tradition and

nostalgia are more frequently embodied representationally in women, while the

progressive, modern aspects of the nation are mapped on to the male body

(McClintock 1993; Radcliffe 1996; Sunindyo 1998). However, in the case of the

ethnicization of office uniforms, it is both men and women who embody tradition.

The key issue then is that in wearing baju kurung, a set of physical and psychological

restrictions are imposed on women in the workplace that restrict behaviour and serve

to gender the workplace performance one day per week. For example, while many

women regularly wear knee-length skirts, if one is wearing baju kurung, it is expected that one does not pull up one’s skirt to knee-length to ride a motorcycle. A more demure behaviour is expected of those who wear the baju kurung which contrasts with the uniforms worn on other days and with the modern work environment the state has attempted to create.

While the fine clothes that employees wear to work on Saturdays are also what they would wear to the mosque or to a Malay wedding, there appears to be no sense of conflict or impropriety in wearing these clothes to the office and I was asked numerous times if I would like to photograph employees in their baju Melayu. While 139

wearing baju Melayu is intended as an expression of Malay identity, it is still taken as seriously as the safari suit in government offices and is imposed on all employees.

One employee failed to wear baju Melayu to work while I was visiting the office and was sent home to change. Employees belonging to other ethnic or cultural groups are also made to wear baju Melayu, including Chinese. On the day of my visit, the most senior civil servant (pictured to the far left of Figure 5.3d) did not wear baju Melayu that day because he had forgotten and had worn his regular uniform. Others in the office did not comment about his dress and when asked, they simply said that ‘he is the boss’, implying that those who make the rules themselves do not have to follow them. The double standards suggest a naturalized bureaucratic hierarchy that produces unevenness in performances of national identity across workers. There are exceptions to this bureaucratic hierarchy, however, as it was pointed out to me that one woman forgot to wear Malay clothes last Saturday. Since she lives far away and commutes a great distance, it was not expected that she go home to change.

Civil servants are pleased with the move towards ethnicization as expressed in uniforms. At least in terms of the Malay uniforms, there is the perception that decentralization is positive and provides greater cultural autonomy although the state’s Taman Mini-ized understanding of cultural diversity is unchanged. In fact, the new Malay uniform ultimately serves to reify the state’s national ideology by making national ‘ethnic’ cultures (albeit in ways that reduce the cultures to a pastiche) tangible and more visible. While civil servants are familiar with the Taman Mini concept of cultural diversity, they are now expected to bring this concept to life through dress, thus perpetuating Taman Mini-style cultural diversity.

The introduction of Malay uniforms was intended to be a liberating move away from centralization, yet in practice it is as homogenizing and top-down as pre- 140

Kepri office uniform rules. While there is some degree of flexibility in the style of

clothes worn, it is clear that civil servants are not involved in making decisions about

their uniforms and can only respond to decrees formulated in Jakarta. On one level,

employees are aware of their freedom to choose what Malay clothes to wear on

Saturdays. At the same time, there in an unconscious performative element to this act

that reinforces and perpetuates the state’s hegemony. Through repetition, the wearing of Malay clothes has come to represent not only civil servants’ own local cultural identity, but also an aspect of national culture in the form of the political entity of

Riau Islands Province.

5.3.4 Upacara Bendera I now turn to one of the key performances of the Indonesian state workplace,

Upacara Bendera, or Flag Ceremony. It is an elaborate and formal ceremony lasting about 30-45 minutes in which the Indonesian flag is ceremoniously raised. The ceremony follows strict protocol that was drafted upon Independence and has been performed weekly by civil servants since the Japanese occupation. It is a common sight to see the flag ceremony across Indonesia on Monday mornings in front of government offices and state-run banks.

The current flag ceremony is nearly identical to the one introduced by the

Japanese, with all Japanese national symbolism replaced with Indonesian national symbolism. In order to build solidarity and maintain ideological hegemony in the workplace, the Japanese introduced many features of the workday, many of which were perpetuated after Independence. Each day, employees would gather in the public front yard of the office to stand as a group. Employees would stand in rows and receive orders from their superior in a military-style interaction. In 1944 the Japanese permitted the Indonesian flag, the Merah Putih [the Red and White] to be flown 141

alongside the Japanese flag in some parts of the archipelago (Goto 2003). While after

Independence, some songs sung in Japanese during the occupation were replaced with

Indonesian songs, some of the songs simply had their lyrics changed from the

Japanese to Indonesian with the tune remaining the same. In the case of the flag

ceremony, the patriotic tone of the performance, its choreography and the location

remained the same – the only change is the state.

There is a stark difference between how state workers who commute to

Tanjung Pinang and state workers who work on Pulau Penyengat perform national

identity. Those who commute to Tanjung Pinang hurry to be at work on time for the

start of Upacara Bendera a half hour before state office hours begin, while civil

servants at the Kelurahan office on Pulau Penyengat arrive as much as 30 minutes

after state office hours begin. Employees on Pulau Penyengat felt that since they were

not forced to conduct Upacara Bendera and no one positioned higher in the bureaucratic hierarchy was watching them, they did not need to bother with it.

Employees in the Kelurahan office in Pulau Penyengat explain:

It is mandatory, but more for the bigger offices. We are just a small office with few employees and this is just kampung [village]… who will see us? (9 February, 2006)

No, not mandatory for us! Only the big offices in the capitals cities ... maybe big towns too. We don’t have enough people. (9 February, 2006)

Their comments imply an awareness of being watched by superiors as well as an awareness of display, suggesting that the audience, in this case Pulau Penyengat society, was perceived as being too small and too insignificant to warrant putting on a show. When I asked employees of the state working on Pulau Penyengat whether they ever considered having a joint flag ceremony in which all civil servants would come together to conduct national ceremonies, they offered similar responses: 142

No, there are just too few of us! When I worked in the mayor’s office in Tanjung Pinang we had so many duties that were mandatory... the atmosphere was more formal ... we would all stand outside for the flag ceremonies in our formal office clothes – quite a sight! Here we are more relaxed and Pak Lurah [head of the kelurahan] is rarely here. He is not from Pulau Penyengat and does not come to the office everyday. We join the ceremonies in Tanjung Pinang only on national days ... 17th of the month, Independence Day, National Hero Day, etc. (10 September, 2006)

We don’t have to ... it’s not mandatory ... we’re lucky! (11 September, 2006)

We don’t have to, so why bother? Our office joins the large ceremonies in Tanjung Pinang on important dates. ... I don’t always join ... there are so many people that they won’t notice if I’m not there! ... If we were told to have a Flag Ceremony we would ... we all know how to do it! (10 September, 2006)

The exceptions on Pulau Penyengat were the teachers (this is discussed in Chapter

Six) and the nurse at the clinic, the only full-time health care professional on the island. The nurse raised a flag on the flagpole in her yard each Monday morning in a mini ceremony on her own.

I raise the flag each Monday morning because that is a rule for government offices... this clinic is run by the state. ... There is no ceremony – it is just me! Sometimes I sing a little bit of Indonesia Raya (national anthem)... I take the flag down every Friday... because you cannot leave the flag there all weekend – it is not polite, not proper. (Ani, 14 February, 2006)

The nurse seems to derive some personal satisfaction from the routine of raising the

flag. More importantly, however, she feels that the flag is a necessary aspect of

appearing professional for the villagers, and putting up a flag each Monday clearly

marks her clinic as a state building.

The variation in commitment to performing Upacara Bendera among state

workers on Pulau Penyengat demonstrates differences in how national identity is

imagined. While civil servants in the Kelurahan office generally see this ceremony as

being performed by lots of people, for lots of people in a large ceremony, the nurse

sees value in the symbolism of raising the flag, even if she is the only employee. The

school teachers are the most diligent civil servants on the island with regards to 143

carrying out Upacara Bendera. The large number of students means that the teachers

have many performers as well as a captive audience, key components of the

ceremony. This variation suggests that performance is only considered performance when there is an audience.

5.3.5 Senam Pagi Indonesia The other main performance of identity in the government workplace is Senam

Pagi Indonesia that, like Upacara Bendera, was introduced during the Japanese occupation. Morning callisthenics called taiso were introduced into the workplace by the Japanese with the intention of inculcating a feeling of solidarity, discipline and strength among government employees working for the Japanese (Owen 2005). After

Independence, they were adopted wholesale by Republican leaders. Figure 5.4 depicts

Japanese soldiers in a prisoner-of-war camp in the Indies immediately after their defeat. They are engaged in taiso, group callisthenics, which they continued to conduct each morning, even after their imprisonment. Their dedication to taiso indicates the importance of group exercises to the Japanese and how the activity generated a sense of solidarity and nationalism that likely lifted the spirits of the prisoners.

144

Figure 5.4 - Japanese doing group callisthenics

*image taken from Raben (1999)

According to fitness experts at Senayan, the National Sports complex in

Jakarta, Senam Pagi Indonesia has been carried out across Indonesia since

Independence with few changes (Field notes, 5 May 2007). The underlying philosophy of Senam Pagi Indonesia views the body as a metonym of the nation, or as one fitness instructor aptly stated it ‘makes the body strong so the nation will be strong’ (Agus, 5 May 2007). The connection is overt and is further explicated by

Agus (5 May, 2007) thus:

Look at these athletes – their bodies are strong, they are fit. If everyone in Indonesia was like this, we would have a very powerful nation, right? If everyone’s body was weak and tired, our nation would also become weak and tired....

However, Agus felt that while Senam Pagi Indonesia introduced a basic level of fitness, he was frustrated that it was not cutting edge fitness as it did not raise the heartbeat significantly.

The purpose is to unite people, not fitness. Once per week is not enough exercise. And it is not ‘intensive’ enough. Jogging is better. Or weight training. (Agus, 5 May, 2007)

In order to standardize Senam Pagi Indonesia across the country, training workshops are held several times per year. Several teachers from Pulau Penyengat 145

volunteered to attend the most recent training held in Tanjung Pinang where they were taught a new routine and that they needed to infuse their Senam Pagi with the necessary ‘spirit’ by acting enthusiastic. The training instructs not only on the physical aspect but on the emotional aspect, which is key in performing Senam Pagi.

Since decentralization, Senam Pagi Indonesia requirements have relaxed in many workplaces and there is significant variation in how it is carried out at the national, provincial and village levels in Pulau Penyengat. Like Upacara Bendera, on

Pulau Penyengat, civil servants in the Kelurahan office consider Senam Pagi

Indonesia as optional. With so few people in the Kelurahan Office, there is no employee who has received official training in leading the Senam Pagi Indonesia.

This indicates that the state has uneven expectations of state offices and is more permissive with smaller, more peripheral offices in terms of enforcing some performances of national identity.

Several residents have independently conducted their own Senam Pagi with a portable stereo playing official Senam Pagi CDs in the square. Participants enjoy the act of coming together regularly and feel more motivated to exercise in a group.

While people can watch government VCDs on television or listen to CDs at home, meeting as a group generates more energy and sense of purpose (Field notes, 14

February, 2006). In these independently-organized Senam Pagi sessions, participants on Pulau Penyengat adopt the theme of national pride to motivate participants and to create a feeling of solidarity and sense of purpose. This linking of exercise and the nation indicates that to many residents on Pulau Penyengat, the format of Senam Pagi

Indonesia has been so normalized that when they wish to start an exercise group, they do so in the same format as Senam Pagi Indonesia. It is popular for many adults to recreate Senam Pagi Indonesia on Sunday mornings, even wearing patriotic red and 146

white exercise clothes (see Figure 5.5). The types of people who join in these

activities are people who both wish to stay in shape and tend not to have other

opportunities to express nationalism. One participant comments on the activity and

the uniforms:

We like to wake up early for Senam so we feel fresh and fit. We wear these uniforms to increase our spirit and look more official. (Wasriah, 16 August, 2006)

Several women from the Kelurahan Office participated in these initiatives but the

men did not. Senam Pagi Indonesia is increasingly perceived as aerobics, which have

grown in popularity in Indonesia in recent years with women and is seen as a

woman’s exercise. While some men in the village still participate in independently-

organized Senam Pagi, its domination by women reveals that it is considered a more

‘feminine’ activity.

Figure 5.5 - Voluntary Senam Pagi Indonesia

For villagers who work as civil servants in Tanjung Pinang, Senam Pagi is still mandatory, although some offices have shifted it to Saturday mornings and has been replaced in many offices by mixed volleyball, which lacks the militaristic undertones of callisthenics and which people find more enjoyable and social. While it is significant that many bosses reject Senam Pagi, an activity they have grown up with, in favour of volleyball, they do not reject the basic notion that employees must come 147

together for a group exercise activity on a weekly basis. The expansion of national

workplace exercise demonstrates how the expression of national identity is less

regimented than in the past, yet is still a key way in which national identity is

performed.

5.3.6 Office performances Beyond the more official workplace performances of national identity, it is

also instructive to examine how state employees perform throughout a workday.

Despite decentralization and the formation of Riau Islands Province, there is still

much daily emphasis on the nation in the context of work. The civil servants from

Pulau Penyengat are all able to describe the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly

programs of national rituals and the accompanying uniforms in great detail and

accuracy. Employees were keenly aware of what was expected of them in national

rituals in detail, including the schedule of daily office rituals such as gathering in the

yard before work, when and where roll call was conducted, the intricacies of Upacara

Bendera and Senam Pagi Indonesia, the ethnic uniform day, the rituals that occur on

the 17th of each month to mark the monthly anniversary of Independence (17 August),

and the various national holidays such as National Heroes Day, and of course,

Independence Day. In fact, some civil servants were better able to describe the

national rituals that were (or should be) part of their job than they were able to

provide a description of their work duties and responsibilities.

As civil servants are the workers most targeted to participate in performances

of national identity, examining a typical day is instructive in understanding how the

state communicates national ideology. In what follows, I provide samples from the

day of a civil servant from Pulau Penyengat that illustrates the ways in which civil servants are mobilized to perform and how they respond to them. 148

Employees arrive at the office and put their bags down at their desks. They wait until 8:30 then walk out to the yard outside the office facing the road. Everyone is chatting and joking as they form lines. They stand loosely in lines waiting for the boss to arrive. He arrives about 10 minutes later with an assistant. The boss stands on a box so he is higher than the employees. His assistant holds a microphone up to his mouth and he makes a show of barking out names27. Employees answer with little enthusiasm.

Yannie! Ya. Ahmad! Ya. Aziz! Ya. ...

8:45 a.m. – After attendance is taken, employees return to the office to relax. The mood is light and some of the men smoke cigarettes. A junior employee is sent to bring tea and snacks for everyone. One woman has a pile of papers on her desk and begins to process new identity cards. There is one computer in the office and the youngest employee is using it to play a computer game. Other employees have moved their chairs around one person’s desk and are laughing loudly, telling jokes and smoking.

9: 30 a.m. – Two women are sleeping with their head on their desks. The computer is still being used for computer games. A cluster of men are sitting around smoking and chatting at one person’s desk.

10:30 a.m. – Only half of the employees have anything at all on their desk. One person works on a typewriter.

At 12:00, all employees leave the office for lunch, some taking a motorcycle home, others walking to a nearby cafe.

1:00 p.m. – After lunch, employees gather in the yard again for attendance taking. It is very hot now and employees are sweating. The boss is late so everyone stands and waits. Once again employees line up and there is a formal show of lining up and calling out employees’ names.

Another employee shows up who had not come in the morning. He had been watching a football game that was broadcast early in the morning and was excused from work to sleep in.

27 As with many of the national rituals I observed, I believe the rigor with which this task was performed was largely for my benefit judging by the theatrical flourish in which the role call was conducted, in contrast to the blasé response of the employees, most of whom did not appear to attempt any extra showmanship for my benefit.

149

Several of the employees nap at their desks. Several people come into the office asking about their identity cards. They are offered chairs and a round of tea is brought out.

By around two, everyone’s desk is clean. The floor is swept by a cleaner and tea cups are taken away. There is nothing to do. Employees sit and chat until it is time to go home.

3:00 p.m. – The workday is over and all employees immediately go home.

For many of the employees, the workplace ceremonies and rituals such as roll call and

Upacara Bendera, in addition to office work, are a key part of their jobs. A primary aspect of being a civil servant is maintaining continuity in carrying out national ritual duties and looking and behaving like a civil servant.

For civil servants, we must know about Indonesia. The main cultures, the history of the struggle for Independence... national rituals. We must look smart and clean – no ear piercings, no long hair! [for men] ... We are told from the top how we should look and behave. (Hendri, 18 March, 2006)

This comment was corroborated by others with whom I spoke and reveals the importance placed on the aspect of work that involves performance. Such workplace ceremonies maintain a high level of importance through their iteration and citation of prior performances, a concept found in Butler’s work on performativity.

The audience is a key part of these national rituals. The flag ceremony, Senam

Pagi Indonesia, the taking of attendance, and the uniforms are all intended for public display and consumption. Civil servants are the actors who produce the performance, but they are also simultaneously audience as they are intended to consume the event and internalize its meaning. As the yard in which these performances are staged is always along a public thoroughfare, the general public is also intended as part of the audience. This same emphasis on the empty yard with a flagpole is extended to the homes of civil servants. It is common to see a flagpole prominently displayed on the street side of a yard in middle class homes as a public display of patriotism. In fact, 150

one civil servant told me, only partly joking, ‘The flagpole is absolutely necessary for each house … if we build a new house, we will erect the flagpole first and then build

the house!’ (Field notes, 4 November, 2004) This comment reinforces how the public, performative side of national rituals are prioritized by civil servants even in their

private lives.

Workplace performances on Pulau Penyengat are not as stringently carried out

as in bigger offices in larger towns. The distance from anyone who would check up on

them and the small numbers of employees has left villagers with the sense that they

are only marginally under state surveillance. For national performances to have an

effect, large groups of people are needed to form part of a spectacle, and audiences

are needed. The small numbers available at Pulau Penyengat have thus been used as

justification for not performing the national rituals as required by Jakarta.

A few of the people I spoke with felt that it was a problem that civil servants

on Pulau Penyengat did not perform in the way that civil servants did in other, larger

offices. They felt this was representative of several problems inherent in civil servants

and Indonesians in general: the lack of discipline and the habit of never doing

anything unless someone is watching over and threatening punishment. The principal

of one of the schools felt that more discipline, more rules, more structure, starting

with teachers, would benefit the village as more would get done, and the moral

character of the workers would be higher.

The various acts of national identity in the workplace can be construed as

performative as they engage citizens in active performances but also contribute to and

maintain the state’s version of national identity. The meaning of the performances

relies on the citation of prior rituals that are now widely recognized as stylized

versions of great moments in the history of the nation: proclamation, the mutual help 151

and cooperation that lead to Independence, the noble abandoning of individual identity for the sake of the nation, the raising of the Indonesian flag for the first time

after Independence. Like the performances of other identities, workplace performances of national identity refer to ‘prior acts and require repetition in order to

endure’ (Butler 1997: 20). For example, through the choreography of the flag

ceremony, the state seeks to temporarily recreate the gravity and emotional intensity

of the moment Independence was proclaimed. Particular lines are written into the flag

ceremony and delivered by participants that were uttered – or imagined to be uttered –

by Sukarno when he announced Indonesian Independence. The wearing of matching

uniforms references the Indonesian revolution and perpetuates the notion of coming

together in a disciplined way for a common cause. This image of revolutionary

discipline and unity is further conveyed through the militaristic style of the uniforms

and tone of the ceremonies. To Indonesians, such elements of the flag ceremony are

clear references to the national struggle and it is through repeated participation in or

exposure to ceremonies that the rituals are familiar.

The workplace rituals in Indonesia constitute a ritual display of national unity.

As Billig (1995) points out, the common occurrence of such choreographed displays

does not necessarily mean that a sense of national pride bubbles within each civil

servant every day, however, it does mean that the nation is celebrated on a routine

basis and has an impact on the populace. In his book The Political Lives of Children, the psychotherapist Robert Coles argues that the significance of the ceremony is not diminished if it is treated not as an intense experience but as routine. Similarly,

Benedict Anderson (1983) suggests that a feeling of national community is produced by the knowledge that across the country people are performing even mundane daily rituals such as reading the same newspaper. I suggest that this sense of national 152

community is felt keenly through work, both by workers themselves as they perform

national rituals as well as by the ‘audience’ or the public. Significantly, the national

workplace performances discussed are all presented in public with the intention of

being observed. While they have become so ordinary and perfunctory, they play an

important role in maintaining citizens’ understanding of the nation and their

relationship to it.

5.4 Non-state workers While non-state workers on Pulau Penyengat are not required to perform national ceremonies or wear national uniforms in their workplaces, they are familiar with the ‘choreography’ of state performances and refer to them strategically in what

Butler calls ‘citational practices’. As will be examined in this section, non-state workers strategically replicate aspects of state workers’ behaviour and appearance in order to gain prestige and respect within the community.

As previously discussed, the growing bureaucracy combined with the ever- increasing rationalization of the workplace has resulted in more uniforms for state workers. This uniformization at the state level has seeped into society more broadly.

Over the past several decades, the prestige associated with uniforms has become more readily accessible as factory-made clothing and printing costs have grown more affordable. As a consequence, non-state workers on Pulau Penyengat enthusiastically and strategically adopted uniforms and the mannerisms of civil servants in an effort to associate themselves with a more powerful entity. This strategy was taken by some

Indonesians who imitated Dutch dress in colonial times, again when Japanese dress was adopted and during the Revolution when the indigenous military groups adopted

versions of Western battle dress (Pemberton 1994: 58). Significantly, these people do 153

not reject the power of the state, but seek to harness state power and prestige for themselves at particular times.

Here I turn to the example of a group of rickshaw drivers on Pulau Penyengat, the lowest socio-economic class on the island. During the recent Gerak Jalan28

[marching competition] they have been diligent in assembling uniforms that, to them, represent positions of power and prestige. In 2006 they wore full military fatigues,

including combat boots (see Figure 5.6), while in 2007 they wore (borrowed) civil

servant track suits.

The rickshaw drivers spent weeks practicing for the competition. While there

was no comic statement intended in their performance, they elicited laughter from the

audience unaccustomed to seeing the rickshaw drivers looking so disciplined and

respectable. While the marching competitions are part of the state’s nation-building

agenda in villages across the archipelago, the rickshaw drivers use them as an

opportunity to make a local point: to impress fellow islanders and hopefully

(temporarily) bring them the respect and dignity that they believe comes with the

uniform. This indicates a gap between the state’s intended meaning of the marching

competitions and the meaning interpreted by villagers in Pulau Penyengat.

28 Marching is held as a village competition. The object is to show national spirit, conform to a group, demonstrate stamina and discipline and follow a leader well (Pak Acay, 10 August, 2006). Teams are made up of six people plus a leader and are groups of friends, relatives or work colleagues. (see Chapter Seven) 154

Figure 5.6 - Marching competition - rickshaw drivers in military costumes

For the rickshaw drivers, the marching competition is an opportunity to

perform for the community. By citing the military through wearing army uniforms,

they strategically decided to present themselves in a way that attempts to temporarily

reverse their social status. Not all in the audience were convinced by this

performance, however, as several people made comments aloud about the rickshaw

drivers pretending to be something they are not.

Others who have sought official-looking uniforms for strategic purposes are neighbourhood leaders and women’s groups. To volunteers in organizations such as

PKK (Pembinaan Kesejateraan Keluarga, or Committee for the Promotion of Family

Prosperity) and other women’s groups, having a uniform is believed to bring prestige.

Likewise, neighbourhood representatives on Pulau Penyengat requested uniforms to wear to the occasional meeting held off the island:

Sometimes we have meetings in Tanjung Pinang with other neighbourhood heads from other parts of the province. We need to look official, right? We don’t want to be dressed in any old way … how would that look? We need to 155

look professional … right now we do not have uniforms … we want them so we can represent Pulau Penyengat with pride. (Yusuf, 16 August, 2005)

Several people expressed frustration with those who imitate state dress and

behaviour. They felt that these people were ‘uneducated and easily influenced by

government propaganda’ (Sayed, 11 August, 2006). In fact, some residents felt they

were lucky not to have to endure the rituals that they found boring as students, when

they regularly had to participate in national ceremonies. Others found such rituals and

the accompanying dress codes a potent example of the oppressive and controlling

approach of an arrogant state administered from Jakarta. One man on Pulau

Penyengat, referred to popularly as Orang Bugil, or ‘Naked Man’, takes pride in never

wearing a shirt and always wearing cut-off jeans, both highly unusual in the context

of Pulau Penyengat where both men and women tend to cover their shoulders and

legs, and the more religious cover their arms and head29. Naked Man makes specific

reference to the lives of state workers when he elaborates upon his chosen dress:

I don’t wear a shirt because this is the way God made me! This is a tropical region! ... I don’t work for the government, I’m not an office person, I’m not an important person or ‘VIP’ … no one can make me wear anything. It’s a free country … no one can judge me but God. (Naked Man, 14 February, 2006)

Through his nakedness, Naked Man is displaying corporeal resistance to the dominant norm, a reaction both to the normalizing and rationalizing hand of the state and that of the powerful local mosque, both of which he feels increasingly enforce conservative rules about dress that serve their own agendas. Through his dress, he consciously rejects the dominant way of being an Indonesian, a man and a Malay. Similarly, several residents I spoke with including Pak Deni, a middle-aged former sailor, express frustration over the uniformization and its implicit symbolism of respectability and elitism:

29 People involved with the fishing industry wear less clothes while working and dress more conservatively when socializing in the village. 156

Everyone wants a uniform ... the rickshaw drivers, the pompong [small wooden boat for ferrying people short distances] drivers, housewives in women’s groups ... I used to wear a uniform on a ship ... we had to know what rank everyone was ... for safety. These uniforms are for show, meaningless. They just want to look official and powerful. (Pak Deni, 14 February, 2006)

Some people, the poor, the uneducated, those who have hardly left Pulau Penyengat, … believe everything the government says. They admire and respect the civil servants and wish that they could be respected like that and have a salary with the assurance of a pension. … Those types of people really annoy me because they just follow whatever the most powerful person says, which is not always the best way. Our civil servants are not creative or smart or even honest … they got their job through KKN [collusion, corruption, nepotism] and do the minimum … why do people listen to them? (Sayed, 13 February, 2006)

In short, while many in Pulau Penyengat view having a job that requires a uniform as prestigious, this view does not go unchallenged. However, no one would dispute that engaging in state rituals and displaying national identity through state uniforms certainly yields benefits and various groups have sought to derive the same benefits through imitation of state adornment. This conscious and strategic performance of national identity recalls Goffman, yet the citation of prior practices is in line with Butler’s performativity.

I now turn to a final example of how the uniformization of Indonesia has affected Riau islanders. In the context of broad national strategies of pembangunan

[development], the creation of jobs and a modern, rationalized workforce are at the forefront and in the National Day parade, pembangunan plans are showcased through

high school students. As there is no high school on Pulau Penyengat, students from

the island go to school in Tanjung Pinang and participate with their school, along with

other schools from around the province. The students are asked to dress up in a range

of uniforms that the state suggests to each school district, with a focus on types of

‘modern’ occupations that are linked closely with nation-building, modernity, and

Indonesia’s national future (Pak Acay, 14 August, 2006). As a feature of 157

Independence Day parades beginning in the New Order, the costumed youth illustrate the importance placed on the development of particular types of jobs and emphasize how they are linked with national identity (Figures 5.7-5.9). The majority of the featured uniforms represent areas earmarked for development in the Riau Islands, such as resort tourism. Others represented professional careers such as accountancy, medicine, law and government.

Figure 5.7 – Students parading 'Developing professions' in the National Day parade - 'Accountants' and 'Salespeople'

158

Figure 5.8 - Students parading 'Developing professions' in the National Day parade – ‘Front office’, ‘Reservation section’, ‘Reception’

Figure 5.9 - Students parading 'Developing professions' in the National Day parade – 'Housekeeping'

As can be seen in the above photos, students are enlisted to publicly perform the state’s national ambition. Uniforms play a key role as being instantly 159

recognizable. To people watching the parade, it is obvious that these people do not actually work in resorts or as doctors, accountants, and so on: Riau is not yet

‘developed’ and does not yet have training schools for most of these occupations. It is clear that this is a performance of a national ideal devised by the state. For the performers, there is the sense that these are simply costumes, not unlike the ethnic costumes other students in the parade are made to wear (14 August, 2006):

No – I am not going to be a doctor! I cannot pay for university and I am not smart enough. (boy in the parade dressed as a doctor)

I would like to work in a resort but I can only speak English a little. (girl dressed up in a ‘reception’ uniform)

Among many participants and spectators, there was a general lack of confidence in the ‘developing professions’ component of the parade. The students were cynical about their future and aware that they were performing the state’s ambitions rather than a reality for their own future. Here we can see a disparity between the state’s version of nation-building and the students’ understanding of it. While they are asked to perform, they are not convinced of this aspect of the state’s vision.

5.5 State ‘volunteers’ Volunteer labour constitutes an important aspect of nation-building strategies on Pulau Penyengat and in Indonesia in general and is profitably studied using concepts of performance and performativity. In this section, I first examine how volunteer labour takes its roots in strategies introduced by pre-colonial imperial forces. I then examine how the state mobilizes particular people to volunteer to work on various national gotong-royong [volunteer] projects in the context of Pulau

Penyengat, before examining how some residents of Pulau Penyengat have adopted the state’s strategy of gotong-royong to advance their own agendas. 160

As mentioned earlier, the Japanese needed bureaucrats to administer Indonesia

in order to extract resources for the war effort and to manage the population. They

also needed a massive number of people to grow food and produce materials needed

by the military, to carry out building projects, and to fight in the Imperial Army.

Similar to heerendienst, the system of unpaid labour under the Dutch, the Japanese

Military Government set up several organizations to enrol labour conscripts, called sukarela in Indonesian or romusha in Japanese, for projects to support the war effort.

The total number of people conscripted as romusha is estimated to be in the millions

(Friend 1997). Organizations set up included Hei Ho which was started in order to conscript labourers for the use of the Japanese government and Sukarela Tentera

Pembela Tanah Air (PETA) to train a local army corps ‘for the defence of the

Fatherland’. The Japanese moved about a quarter of a million Indonesians around their colonies to work on major projects that supported the Japanese war effort.

During the war the Riau Islands were under the administration of Singapore and many

Malays were taken to Singapore to join the Imperial Army (Andaya 1997).

The use of conscript labour continued after Independence, although it was justified by the state as serving the contradictory purposes of being traditional and pre-colonial while contributing to development and modernization of the Indonesian nation. While it was referred to by the name gotong-royong, it was in fact more similar to the Japanese practice of romusha. Gotong-royong is originally a Javanese term (although the practice is found across the archipelago) that refers to the mutual assistance neighbours and communities offer when the need arises. Such a need could be at the household scale, for example if a family needs to borrow money for an emergency or needs additional labour to help build a new roof for their house.

Gotong-royong can also be practiced at the community level, when village labour is 161

pooled to create a new rumah adat [traditional community hall] or other labour-

intensive project. After Independence, instead of giving free labour to the Japanese

state through romusha, (male) citizens were to give free labour to the Indonesian state

through gotong-royong. Sukarno elevated gotong-royong to state policy, even going so far as to call Indonesia a ‘gotong-royong state’ (Friend 2003). Gotong-royong was framed as being a man’s obligation as a member of the nation and as a way to actively show patriotism and support national causes. On a national level, conscript labour was used to construct mega-projects such as the National Stadium at Senayan, Jakarta, for which thousands of Indonesians were mobilized by the state around the clock to work without pay to construct the sports complex in time for the 1962 Asian Games.

The use of gotong-royong for nation-building was felt down to the village level including Pulau Penyengat, where various national projects were built through state-organized village labour, such as schools and administration buildings as well as mandatory neighbourhood or hamlet gateways, constructed to commemorate

Independence. State gotong-royong projects intensified during the New Order and on

Pulau Penyengat there are still regular, if smaller-scale projects created with gotong- royong labour. While there is still an active sense of neighbourly mutual assistance on

Pulau Penyengat, in this section I refer to volunteers who lend their labour to state projects. One resident of Pulau Penyengat expressed a commonly-held view in his comment about gotong-royong:

Gotong-royong is our culture, our tradition. If a neighbour needs help with something, we help out. For free – they do not have to pay anything... because if then I need help my neighbours will help me for free. (Pak Fazrul, 7 October, 2007)

The act of gotong-royong references a recognizable communal tradition and

can be understood as a citational practice referring back to an aspect of community

life that is considered wholesome, positive, and community-oriented. While others 162

have examined the symbolism of built gotong-royong projects (Sekimoto 1997), I

argue that the key role of these projects is the process of gathering volunteers and the

actual public performance of gotong-royong. While performing scripted roles that

demonstrate solidarity and uniformity, the workers are simultaneously both actors

who produce the performance and as well as an audience intended to consume and internalize its meaning.

While adopted by the state for nation-building purposes, the practice is more about spending the time publicly demonstrating cooperation than accomplishing a task. This is evidenced by the fact that many gotong-royong projects are never

completed. A certain amount of time and / or materials are allocated to the project and

when this runs out, the project is abandoned. The project itself is of little importance;

it is the doing of the project, the display of cooperation and spirit that are key, as will

be demonstrated in what follows.

Pulau Penyengat has had several gotong-royong projects in recent years, each

determined by the kelurahan in the case of larger projects and by the RT

[neighbourhood] or RW [hamlet] for smaller neighbourhood projects. For the larger projects, the provincial government in Tanjung Pinang asks each kelurahan what their program of gotong-royong is for the year. The kelurahan then submits several ideas

they have come up with along with a budget. Past ideas have included a playground, a

paved path around the island, and various village ‘beautification’ projects.

During the Old Order, gotong-royong labour was used to construct and

maintain the first state buildings on the island, including a new school, the PKK

building, and the clinic. Seniors on Pulau Penyengat explain the general feeling of

helping to construct these state buildings:

We were very spirited after Independence to build new facilities... We needed a new school and a clinic but there was no money to build them... We worked 163

together ... the spirit of gotong-royong... the government provided the materials. (Pak Hari, 7 May, 2006)

There was a sense of community spirit and national unity that Independence brought

and the state was able to channel this into volunteer projects. At the state level in

Jakarta at this time, Sukarno was able to inspire tens of thousands of people to help

construct the national stadium largely with free labour.

The state practice of gotong-royong was continued in the New Order, during

which time it was frequently employed by the state in Pulau Penyengat to mobilize

groups of men to contribute labour to state projects, such as constructing and

maintaining state buildings in the village and creating a number of decorative projects

such as village gates and planters. In his essay ‘Uniforms and concrete walls’, Teruo

Sekimoto writes about how youth in a Javanese village where he conducted fieldwork in the mid-1970s would be mobilized to spend time on projects with little practical utility such as decorative gates and concrete walls until ‘the village looked neat and clean with national symbols everywhere’ (Sekimoto 1997: 316). In fact, the state held competitions between villages in which they would be evaluated on their

‘beautification achievements’ that would ‘drive the villagers into more advanced degrees of collective work in succeeding years’ (Sekimoto 1997: 316). This practice continues in Pulau Penyengat and remnants of similar activities can be found scattered around Pulau Penyengat. One carried out in the early 1990s involved cutting the brush back from a path through an unbuilt part of the island and using segments of huge concrete piping as planters. The labour-intensive work of cutting back the brush, moving and arranging the concrete planters, filling them with soil, painting them alternating white and light blue, and then planting bougainvillea was carried out entirely by volunteers. After completion, there was occasional maintenance in subsequent gotong-royong activities in which the planters were repainted. At present, 164

most of the plants are now dead, the paint has flaked away and the brush is not kept trimmed.

In 2007, more concrete planters were created next to a path in another part of the island (Figure 5.10). Unlike the previous planter project, this one was more modest in scale, requiring fewer volunteers and materials. The physical structures of the planters were formed from concrete-covered brick but were left unpainted. The similarity between this project and the one created about two decades ago demonstrates how the village beautification strategies that spark wide participation and inter-village competition have not changed on Pulau Penyengat since the height of the Old Order. However, the down-sized scale of the recent project suggests that such projects are not as prioritized as they used to be in terms of funding and labour.

Figure 5.10 - Gotong-royong project - path-side planters

Residents of Pulau Penyengat are also mobilized for various kampung

[village] improvement projects around Independence Day, including the beautification of neighbourhood gates. These gates are found throughout Indonesia 165

and mark the entrance to a particular neighbourhood (see Figures 5.11 and 5.12).

Designs for the gates depend on the budget, drawn from neighbourhood donations, and volunteers are free to design the gate in whichever way they choose as long as there is some element commemorating the anniversary of Indonesian Independence.

Design guidelines are passed along to the representatives of the RT and RW who communicate them to the volunteers. In what follows, I provide a brief ethnography of a gotong-royong gate beautification project.

The volunteers sit around discussing what needs to be done on the gate. All of the volunteers are men, all under 40 except the neighbourhood leader who is guiding the activity. The leader suggests writing ‘17-08-45’ (the date of Independence) on the front of the gate in order to show patriotism. A younger volunteer counters that this will not fit on the front of the gate because of decorative ridges in the concrete and suggests they write it on the smoother inside wall of the gate. Others agree with the suggestion and someone volunteers to paint it, confident of his skill in painting numbers. He sets out to sketch the numbers in pencil. People passing by ask what they are going to do with the gate and several people stop by to chat and watch. The leader says that there is enough paint to touch up the existing concrete frieze, which should be prioritized over adding more decoration. He says he hopes to add something distinct and creative to the existing design. One of the men’s wives brings some glasses of tea and small snacks for the men. Children are hanging around watching the group. A neighbour passes by and comments that another gate in another neighbourhood he has seen has further decorated their gate with cut bamboo. The response to this comment is that the arch will be ‘good enough’ with what they have planned. (Field notes, 6 August, 2006)

While the volunteers are carrying out the wishes of the state, the task is conducted as any project in the neighbourhood would, indicating a ‘fusion of state structure and neighbourly practice’ (Hatley 1982: 57-58). At the same time, there is the distinct awareness that this is a state activity that will be inspected. The leader wants to make the gates look fresh as they will be inspected by the Pak Lurah from the kelurahan office, however he rejects the elaborate design suggestions, claiming that they will take too much time and effort to execute. The subtext here is that he is trying to get through the inspection with the minimum amount of effort. The leader’s 166

comments also indicate that this is a performance for which there are multiple

audiences. First, the group is aware that they are performing for the general public

who can watch them work as they walk by. Second, the team performs for the neighbourhood who can watch to see how the team is working, the ability of the leader to guide the process, lead the team, and produce a gate to be proud of. Third, the team performs for the state, in the form of the Pak Lurah who will inspect the gate.

The workers gathered for gotong-royong projects on Pulau Penyengat tend not to be employees of the state, but are either marginally employed or were working in the informal sector. ‘Volunteers’ are recruited for such projects by the state representatives at the RT and RW levels. As one Pak RT [neighbourhood leader] states,

We announce that volunteers are needed for a project. Sometimes we need five or six people, sometimes ten or fifteen or more...it depends on the project. ... There is no limit to the number of volunteers ... of course, more is better so the work is lighter and the group is more spirited. (Pulau Penyengat, 17 August, 2006)

Another Pak RT explains that he targets people who he knows have time on their

hands or who are unemployed, particularly youths. As one middle-class man points

out,

If there is a gotong-royong project, we are asked to donate money. If we have no money, then we have to join the gotong-royong activity. (8 August, 2006)

These comments demonstrate that on Pulau Penyengat, gotong-royong reflects class

divisions in a way that contradicts the intended unifying and egalitarian spirit of the

practice30.

30 Barbara Hatley (1982) makes a similar observation in the context of a central Javanese kampung in the 1970s in which wealthier kampung dwellers could made a monetary contribution instead of contributing physical help. 167

Figure 5.11 - Gotong-royong - 'volunteers' repainting a neighbourhood gate

Figure 5.12 - Gotong-royong 'volunteers'

5.5.1 Strategic non-state volunteerism Some residents on Pulau Penyengat feel that the state has been increasingly intrusive since decentralization and the formation of Riau Islands Province, particularly due to recent plans to develop the island’s tourism potential. Resistance to 168

state control has manifested itself in activities of citizen groups who wish to have

more control over island affairs. Adopting gotong-royong in the recuperated language

of the state, one group decided to start a team that would engage in island

improvement and clean-up projects in order to prove to other residents that they could

manage the island themselves without the state and hopefully inspire their fellow

villagers to join their cause. The gotong-royong group consisted of 8-10 young men who were marginally employed in seasonal work or odd-jobs and were led by Sayed, a local who had experience working in various Indonesian resorts. Every second morning Sayed would pack tea and snacks for the gotong-royong group and assemble them in the square next to the mosque and they would set off as a group. This group hoped that the island would obtain be able to obtain greater autonomy through displays of hard work that would prove they were willing to work towards common goals in ways the state would recognize and respect.

Sayed’s gotong-royong initiative illustrates how some locals strategically

employ state strategies in order to resist the hegemony of the state. Reinforcing what

James Siegel (1997) has written about the power of recognition in the formation of

identity, residents of Pulau Penyengat recognize the state’s power as legitimate and

then attempt to imitate it to their advantage. Adopting civil service-like uniforms or mobilizing gotong-royong groups reaffirms hierarchies and the state’s authority while using them for local purposes unintended by the state. Furthermore, while Sayed and the others were strategic in selecting gotong-royong as a tactic that they thought might bring success, they were uncritical of the constructedness of the concept itself. This indicates the success the state has had in naturalizing its national ideology, as even those resisting the state do so using state concepts. 169

5.6 Summary In this chapter, I have demonstrated how work is used in nation-building and

how the nation and workplace intersect on Pulau Penyengat. The empirical examples

of state workers, non-state workers and state ‘volunteers’ illustrate the unevenness of

the state’s nation-building strategies across the working population while at the same

time, revealing how potent and familiar civil servants’ performances of national

identity have become.

The empirical examples demonstrate how the state has made civil servants

highly visible and immediately recognizable through the different uniforms required

on particular days. The uniforms give the appearance of widespread state support and

homogeneity amongst civil servants and, since the meaning of the uniforms is widely

known to the public, the uniforms are a way by which the state can broadcast its

ideology to the population through the bodies of its employees. Through uniforms and

choreographed workplace performances, civil servants are intended to embody

national ideals such as discipline, order, progress and the sacred aura of the

Revolution.

The state is unable to control how non-state workers interpret and use national performances intended for civil servants. This is exemplified through the adoption of official-looking uniforms by non-state workers and the practice of the state’s version of gotong-royong by one group on Pulau Penyengat. To many non-state workers, state uniforms are a potent symbol of power. Non-state workers who adopted civil servant- like uniforms did not dispute the hegemony of the state but rather wished to co-opt the authority of the state to gain personal prestige. This recognition of the state’s power ultimately served to reinforce it. In contrast, the gotong-royong group discussed

earlier strategically adopted the state’s version of the practice in order to both resist the state’s hegemony and advance their personal agenda. Work is performed 170

simultaneously in conscious, strategic ways as conceptualized by Goffman and in

subconscious, iterative practices that reinforce workplace norms as conceptualized by

Butler.

This chapter has demonstrated how the state has employed particular

mechanisms of control through dress and workplace performances in an attempt to

‘nationalize’ particular segments of the citizenry and maintain its authority. However,

despite the regimentation of government workplace performances and the state’s

attempts to maintain uniformity and control, there are several things that prevent

homogenous workplace performances.

First, as my analysis of these three groups of workers demonstrates, it is clear

that performances of national identity are not applied evenly across the working

population. In national ceremonies, civil servants are prioritized over non-state

workers, who, over the decades, have been increasingly excluded from participating.

Second, as this chapter indicates, there is room for interpretation of

compulsory national performances among workers. Some state workers are convinced

that they are not obliged to participate in national activities such as Upacara Bendera,

Senam Pagi Indonesia, or ethnic costume day because of their age or seniority. The

unevenness within the same workplace reinforces existing social hierarchies based on age and perpetuates the hierarchical relationship between senior and junior

employees.

Third, the state itself has uneven expectations as to how civil servants should

perform in different offices. State rules regarding, for example, uniforms, are subject

to the interpretation of multiple layers of bureaucracy, resulting in a high degree of

variation in how, and to what extent, national ceremonies and rituals such as Upacara

Bendera and Senam Pagi Indonesia are performed. Furthermore, as the empirical 171

material reveals, the state’s expectations as to how civil servants are to perform national identity are closely linked to the intended audience. As the Kelurahan on

Pulau Penyengat is considered peripheral and the number of residents is small, there is no audience of any size to perform to and many performances of national identity that are mandatory elsewhere are thus overlooked by the state.

172

Chapter 6 – Educating the Nation

6.1 Introduction It is early Friday morning and hundreds of elementary school students dressed in identical orange tracksuits pour into the school yard like an army of children. They bend over, in a local gesture of respect, and gently press their foreheads against the outstretched hands of any teachers they see in the yard. Students mill around chatting in clusters or playing until their teachers call them to form lines according to their grade. Teachers and older students patrol the lines, ensuring that each student is facing forward, that the lines are straight, and that each student is spaced an arm’s length away from the student in front and behind in the line. The grid of students is surrounded by older students and teachers placed at regular intervals. Once everyone is in position, a recording of upbeat music begins to emerge from speakers. In unison, the entire school begins the weekly callisthenic session. The students bend down, march in place, raise their arms at particular moments, clap their hands, and turn in different directions in unison to the beat of the woman’s voice on the recording counting from one to eight over and over again and played so loud that talking is impossible. The choreographed moves are complicated but require a minimal level of exertion or fitness. Students are paying close attention in order to keep up with the complicated moves. The session lasts for about half an hour, after which the students are given about forty minutes of ‘rest time’ before their classes. The students use this time to play soccer, badminton and various other games, and do not appear tired by the callisthenics. (Field notes, June 5, 2006)

The above scenario illustrates how the state’s agenda of nation-building is carried out through the actions of school children. Active, bodily performances in the context of schools are a key way in which the state inculcates ideology in its citizens and is a key way in which people on Pulau Penyengat experience and understand the nation. The above scenario also illustrates how local cultural elements seep into national performances in the act of giving sayang31 when the children press their

forehead to the hands of elders upon arriving at school. For many residents of Pulau

Penyengat, the only time in their lives in which they are asked by the state to

31 The sayang greeting is commonly performed in Pulau Penyengat and the Malay world by children up to their mid-teens to their elders in various contexts. It is one of the first things parents teach their babies and is seen to display refined manners and good parenting. 173

participate in official national rituals is as a student. As the most visible and frequent

performances of national identity on Pulau Penyengat, it is necessary to include

school performances in a study of embodied national identity. Furthermore, since

educational settings have been instrumental sites in which official versions of national

identity are inculcated, they can provide an understanding of how official national

identity is perpetuated and normalized through repetitive performance and also how it

is challenged and reinterpreted by the participants.

While there have been numerous studies examining the connections between

power, nation-building and education, the literature tends to focus on curriculum and bureaucratic structures, rather than on students’ embodied experiences. As Jan

Penrose (1993: 28) argues, ‘nations are not natural entities but social constructions’, which, as Lyn Parker (2003: 206) rightfully reminds us, need to be ‘created and continually recreated’. This perpetual maintenance requires the repetition of embodied activity, a conceptual approach that resonates with the dynamism inherent in the concepts of performance and performativity. Conceptualizing the continuous re- creation of the nation-state in schools as performative is a helpful way to approach the issue of nation-building through education at the finest scale of political space

(Hyndman & de Alwis 2005). As Benedict Anderson (1990: 111) wrote of Indonesia,

‘the consistent leit-motiv of the New Order governance has been the strengthening of the state qua state’. One of the most effective tools that the Indonesian state used to strengthen itself was through the implementation of mass schooling (Parker 2002).

In this chapter I review the literature that links education and nation-building, and work that has examined how school rituals and activities can be conceptualized as performance. I then discuss educational policy and investigate how education has been a site in which national identity is inculcated, to varying degrees of success, 174

through performance. In order to contextualize Indonesia’s history of education and to understand its continuities and innovations across changes in leadership, I provide an overview of pre- and post-Independence education strategies. Without delving into an analysis of educational curricula (see Poerbakawatja 1971; Mangunpranoto 1978;

Siegel 1986; Parker 1992a; Buchori 1994; Leigh 1999; Buchori 2001; Bjork 2005;

Laksmi 2006), I focus my investigation on the compulsory national ritual performances in an elementary school on Pulau Penyengat. The four areas in which I focus my study include the complex set of national school uniforms, Senam Pagi

Indonesia [Indonesia’s Morning Exercise], Upacara Bendera [Flag Ceremony] and the national ethnic identities which are taught using performative strategies. These ceremonies overlap with those performed in state workplaces and serve to reinforce observations and analysis there. However, there are differences in how they are performed and experienced in the context of schools on Pulau Penyengat that make education a crucial realm in which to study performances of national identity.

Throughout the discussion, I examine how state schools in Pulau Penyengat have relied upon the citizenry to perform in particular ways and how performativity can help to conceptualize the repetition and citational practices crucial in perpetuating the state’s version of national identity.

6.2 Education and nation-building There is a rich literature examining how states create citizens through schools.

As one of the most important social services states provide and the ‘principle ideological apparatus of the state’, leaders of states attribute great importance to education as part of the means of achieving social transformation (Carnoy et al.

1990). Education is seen as ‘a route to all things’ (Carnoy et al. 1990: 175), the primary vehicle for learning skills, where ideas, values, and worldviews are developed 175

so that ‘from the process of schooling there emerges a new person—not simply

someone with skills, but also someone with an understanding of his or her own role in

the world and of what is important for that society’.

There are a number of scholars who have examined connections between

education and nation-building. For example, McVeigh (2000) has observed that the

Japanese state has long regarded the school as a key site of socialization for imbuing the youth with the morals and ideology of the nation. Similarly, Marshall (1994) provides an in-depth analysis of the development of Japan’s education system in his book Learning to Be Modern. He examines the power struggles and ideological controversies about how to socialize and enculturate the youth as the ‘heart of the processes by which a society is continually recreated’ (Marshall 1994: 1) and argues that ‘society’s normative assumptions and hegemonic ideals are most clearly revealed’ through values found in both textbooks and classroom behaviour (1994: 2).

In Lois Peak’s (1991) book Learning to Go to School in Japan, she observes the vast differences between children’s behaviour at home and at school, examining how school teaches a new set of behaviours. She focuses on the transition when a child learns ways of behaving in the school and examines the techniques of social training used to elicit ideal behaviour: obedient, cooperative, self-reliant, and group-oriented.

This literature convincingly demonstrates the various ways in which schools attempt to shape the behaviour of students to conform to societal values.

Despite the global increase in mass schooling, particularly in the second half of the 20th century, education in the service of the nation-state has been comparatively

neglected by scholars of the nation-state. Parker (2003: 206) speculates that ‘perhaps

the “fit” of schooling and the nation-state is so precise, so “natural”, that it remains

invisible’. In response to this gap, Parker denaturalizes education by viewing it as ‘a 176

means of making and recreating the nation-state’ through her numerous studies of curricula and classroom behaviour in a village in Bali (1992b; 1992a; 2002; 2003).

Mass education acts as a key ideological instrument for the state to legitimize and naturalize its power. One of the key functions of mass education is to bring a diverse

population into direct contact with the state’s ideological apparatus (Carnoy et al.

1990). Boli et al. (1985: 146) conceptualize mass education as ‘a means of resolving the strains of differentiation’ and as a ‘structure of universalistic integration’. In other words, as members of a modern society we are all entangled in various homogenizing structures that serve to conform individuals to a norm and to shape them into citizens.

It is through mass education that members of the rational society and modern state are created:

In the new view, the unformed, the parochial, or even the morally defective child could be molded in desired ways if its environmental experiences were controlled in a rational and purposive manner. Such deliberate socialization was necessary because all of the virtuous goals of society increasingly were seen as attainable only to the extent that individual members of society embodied the corresponding personal virtues. ... Education is engendered by the effort to create properly socialized members of the rational society who have the capacity and disposition to join in the struggle for progress as workers, innovators, consumers, organizers, and committed members of the political community. (Boli et al 1985: 157-58)

As Ramirez and Rubinson argue (1979) the state promotes a system of mass

education in order to transform all individuals into members of the national polity.

Moreover, it supports a uniform system to build devotion to common goals, symbols, and assumptions about proper conduct in the social arena. Similarly, as Goffman

(1961: 41) has theorized, schools can be understood as ‘total institutions’ in which authority ‘is directed to a multitude of items of conduct – dress, deportment, manners

– that constantly occur and constantly come up for judgment’.

Several scholars have made detailed studies of Indonesian textbooks and the national curriculum, how the content has changed over time, and to what extent 177

textbooks engender a sense of patriotism in students (Thomas, 1990; Parker, 1992a;

Leigh, 1999). While content analyses of school curricula reveals much about the

state’s values and strategies of indoctrination, they do not examine the embodied

aspects of education in which students and teachers are expected to act out state rituals and to perform in particular ways. Like the workplace performances examined in Chapter Five, the variety of school-based national performances in the form of ceremonies, adornment, activities and songs is striking. They are commonplace throughout Indonesia, constitute an integral part of growing up in Indonesia and serve as a way of linking the citizenry. However, as with workplace performances, school performances of national identity have not been explicitly examined in the existing literature. In the context of a Balinese village, Parker (2003: 206) points out the

‘tremendous coercive power’ schools have over child citizens, who enter school at the age of about six as ‘not-yet citizens and come out, three to twelve years later, as citizens.’ While she does not adopt the concept of performance in her writing, Parker alludes to how Indonesian state education seeks to transform students’ behaviour – inside and outside the classroom – to national ideals.

One anecdote that illustrates how educational experience transforms children into citizens was related to me by an Indonesian who had done her graduate studies in the U.S. She and the two other Indonesian graduate students at the university were asked to perform something ‘Indonesian’ for a university cultural festival. As a Batak from north Sumatra, a Chinese-Indonesian from Jakarta and a Balinese, the students were stumped as to what they could perform together to represent Indonesia. Finally, they decided to perform the only thing they could think of that they were all familiar with: they sang a propaganda song about democracy that they had learned in school at the height of the Suharto regime. (Field notes, 30 November, 2004) 178

6.2.1 School ritual as performance In the 1990s, several sociologists of education including Peter McLaren,

Richard Quantz, and Peter Magolda integrated the concepts of ritual and performance into analyses of education. These scholars critique the existing literature on ritual for its emphasis on the spectacular over the everyday, arguing that both the spectacular and everyday can productively be examined as types of rituals. It is helpful here to provide a brief background on how ritual has been examined in order to show its similarities to performance and how, at least to some scholars, these two concepts have merged.

A 1997 special issue of the journal Urban Review explores ways in which ritual can be used as a major organizing concept for analyzing educational practices.

Richard Quantz and Peter Magolda think of ritual as an aspect of social action in which the most ordinary and mundane of activities have the potential to achieve the various effects attributed to ritual. They demonstrate this by presenting ordinary school activities that are mundane yet can be thought of as ritual moments, such as a school assembly and the everyday activities in a science class. In the same issue,

McCadden demonstrates how the transition from ‘child’ to ‘student’ is ritualized in contemporary society through imposed expectations in school and at home. This transition parallels the process of transforming a student into a citizen through repeated actions.

Quantz (1999: 493) is critical of social anthropologists and educational ethnographers who, he argues, ‘appear to prefer to listen to what their informants say rather than to observe what they perform’ and that rather than drawing evidence from interviews with informants, they ought to engage the detailed visual and aural descriptions that one often finds in the classic ethnographies of tribal societies.

Ronald Grimes critiques how educational ethnographies are written in a way that 179

assume[s] the primacy of auditory and visual sensorial and makes no systematic attempt to assess kinaesthetic, gestural, and postural dimensions of liturgy. It attends primarily to the exegetical meanings of symbols (that is, what people say about those symbols), and it ignores their operational and positional meanings. (Grimes 1990:195)

In other words, Grimes argues that educational ethnographers prioritize what their

subjects say over what they do. Similarly, Quantz agrees that scholars have

favoured the static words of informants to close description of the processes of social performance, undoubtedly one of those reasons is that the wide literature on ritual has assumed that ritual is not a particularly important aspect of contemporary, complex societies. They assume that ritual performances are just not as important in modern, bureaucratic, secular schools as they once were in communal, sacred tribal societies. (Quantz 1999: 494)

Conducting research in the context of contemporary North American schools,

Magolda and Quantz (1997) interpret ritual as formalized, symbolic performance that

cannot be separated from everyday life that includes staging and costumes. They

make this point through examining several ordinary classroom activities (e.g. a school

assembly, a high school chemistry class) that may appear mundane, but can be

understood as ritual and argue that ritual can be thought of as ‘an aspect of action

rather than as a type of action’ (Magolda and Quantz 1997: 221). Such an approach,

whether conceptualized as ‘ritual’ or as ‘performance’ allows us to understand how

powerful cultural messages can be found even in mundane everyday activities.

6.3 Setting the stage for national schooling This section offers a brief history of pre-Independence education under the

Dutch and Japanese to demonstrate continuity with post-Independence education

initiatives.

6.3.1 Education under the Dutch The Dutch in Indonesia were interested primarily in trade and until the 19th

century, the only schools that were set up in the region were run by Christian missionaries, which were exclusively for Europeans, the elite, or for Christian 180

converts. As early as 1775, British colonial policy in India emphasized the importance of educating the natives in order to further their economic goals. Through education,

the colonial British sought to ‘harness the native mind to the new state apparatus as a

cheap but indispensable carrier of its administrative burden’ (Guha 1997: 167). In

contrast, the Dutch did not believe that educating its native population would benefit

their economic goals and did not develop strategies for indigenous education until

early in the 20th century.

Spurred on by the advance of democracy in the homeland and a greater

understanding of the oppressive work conditions natives were subjected to in the

Dutch East Indies, the Ethical Policy was created in 1901 to address the Netherlands’

‘ethical obligations and moral responsibility’ and stressed that the government would do its best to provide facilities for native education (Lee 1995). The Dutch came to realize that without some Western-type education the Indonesian nobility and village heads, upon whom the system of forced cultivation relied, could not be effective. The

Hague thereupon empowered the governor-general to allocate 25,000 guilders to set up schools to train Indonesians for the colonial administration. These prepared the children of priyayi [traditional aristocratic class of Java] to become administrators in the colonial service (Storry 1979). Even by 1860, ‘native schools did not yet exist in the residence of Batavia in 1860’ (De Haan, 260 - cited in Govaars 2005: 40). By

1865, there was a paltry total of 3,017 pupils in 58 regency schools in Java, all boys.

In 1893 indigenous education was reorganized into two streams. What the Dutch called ‘First-class’ schools were reserved for children of headmen and prominent persons and offered a five-year course. Children of common people were placed in what the Dutch referred to as ‘Second-class’ schools, offering just a three-year course.

The people in villages were expected to find or construct their own schools, while the 181

colonial government would provide books, develop syllabi and train teachers. Despite the changes, students still consisted overwhelmingly of children of the local ruling elite and of European children (Storry 1979). Children of the indigenous elite were considered more inclined to study and would reach a level of literacy that would enable them to work as clerks, requiring only a minimum of Europeans to govern the immense colony (Tarling 2001). While the Dutch used Malay as the lingua franca to communicate with the colonized, they used regional languages as the medium of instruction in the schools. There were several contradictory reasons for this. First, there was a humanitarian perspective that felt that they should be allowed to learn in their own language. Second was the more sinister and pragmatic reason of having a population that was unable to communicate with one another (Kahin 1952).

Another reason the Dutch decided to fund native education was the growing

Pan-Islamic movement32 in the early 20th century. They sought to counter the Islamic influence with a Western education and exposure to European culture and ideals, a move the Dutch hoped would attract native support away from the Islamic culture

(Benda 1958). The few students educated in this system formed a new secular, Dutch- educated Indonesian elite whose leadership and philosophy of nationalism was guided by Dutch ideas rather than political Islam. The Dutch school system encouraged indigenous students to behave in Western ways such as attending high school dances

(Mrázek 2002). Some Western-educated indigenous men came to see their own society through Dutch eyes, as dirty and backward (Owen 2005). Also influenced by

Dutch culture, many wished to date and choose their own wives rather than have their marriage arranged for them by their families.

32 The Pan-Islamic movement was an international movement led primarily by residents of colonized countries. Rejecting European authority, they sought a united Muslim world that followed Islamic Shari’a law (Laffan 2003). 182

By the time the Japanese invaded and ended the Dutch occupation, the number of Indonesians who had attended school was still extremely low despite the efforts of previous decades. The Dutch had created very little educational infrastructure during their occupation of Indonesia. Immediately after Independence was declared in 1945, there were just five senior high schools throughout Indonesia, all of which were in

Java, one junior high school in each karesidenan (a now defunct administrative area, directly below the provincial administration and above the kabutaten, or district administration), and one elementary school in each kecamatan sub-district area

(Buchori 2001). There were just five teacher training schools for elementary school teachers (all in Java) and one teacher training school in Jakarta.

Many nationalists who eventually became leaders after Independence were among the few who were given a higher education by the Dutch. Partai Nasional

Indonesia (PNI), the party that eventually became the government of Indonesia, had several highly educated founding members. Sukarno was a graduate of the Bandung

School of Technology and Tjipto Mangunkusumo, the famed nationalist leader and national hero who was exiled and imprisoned for his resistance to Dutch colonial rule, was a physician who had attended the Javanese medical school. Other prominent and highly educated members of the PNI included Mohammed Hatta, the first vice president of Indonesia, who had studied economics in Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Sutan Sjahrir, the first prime minister of Indonesia, who had studied law in

Leiden.

6.3.2 Indigenous education initiatives during colonial times Education was a source of anger and deep division in the Indies from the early 19th century as it occurred late in the Dutch Occupation and was treated in an inconsequential and neglectful manner by the Dutch (Govaars 2005). Despite the 183

severe shortcomings of the education system, improving it was not initially a priority

for nationalists. In the early 20th century, nationalists focused their efforts on

organizing social and economic projects to improve the lot of the poor. It was only in

the 1920s that the various nationalist movements prioritized education as a way to

obtain self-government, preserve traditional values, to ‘invent Indonesians’, and as a

response to elitism and Eurocentrism in Dutch schools (Owen 2005: 301).

Mangunpranoto (1976) argues that education was a crucial part of rejecting occupying

forces and creating a population with an understanding of and loyalty to the concept

of ‘Indonesia’.

As it was difficult for most locals to gain access to Dutch schooling, private indigenous-run schools sprung up across the archipelago. One of the main indigenous school systems that emerged during Dutch colonial rule was pioneered by early nationalists. In the 1920s, a school system called Taman Siswa, or ‘Garden of

Learning’, was created across the archipelago33, fulfilling a need for indigenous

education (Tsuchiya 1987). Subjects from the Dutch curriculum were taught in the

Javanese language and the history of Java rather than Dutch history was studied. The

Taman Siswa schools also had students and staff wear Javanese clothing rather than

the western clothes the Javanese were increasingly adopting. These schools

emphasized and strengthened the awareness of a shared national culture and identity.

Another indigenous educator in the early 20th century, Raden Adjeng Kartini, one of

the earliest nationalist figures, ‘personified the new social consciousness by her

efforts to make education available to girls and uplift the status of women’ (Khoo

1977:15). Similarly, another nationalist figure, Dr. Mas Wahidin Sudiro Husudo,

focused on producing education for locals, travelling around Java to campaign to set

33 Ki Hadjar Dewantara (1967: 165) states that by 1938 there were between 207 and 250 Taman Siswa schools, of which 4 were in Bali, 70 in East Java, 45 in Central Java, 32 in West Java, 49 in Sumatra, 2 in Borneo, 2 in Sulawesi, 1 in Ambon and 1 in Ternate. 184

up schools and to collect money for scholarship funds. Through his work as an

educator, he influenced a group of young medical students who founded the

organization Budi Utomo [Noble Endeavour] in 1908, which heralded the birth of the

Indonesian nationalist movement and was dedicated to the promotion of education

among Indonesians (Dewantara 1967). Religious associations such as Muhammadiya set up Islamic schools34 to provide a Muslim alternative to Dutch Christian education

(Dewantara 1967), believing that their society’s decline was the result of straying

from the correct practice of Islam (Peacock 1978).

On Pulau Penyengat, Raja Ali Haji, a well-respected member of the

indigenous ruling elite, who was a prolific scholar and poet, requested funds from the

Dutch in the late 19th century to build a school on the island for the sons of the ruling

elite (Putten 2006). However, Raja Ali Haji was unable to secure the necessary

funding as he was feared by the Dutch as a fanatical Muslim who was suspected of

having ambitions to expel the Dutch and take over Riau (Putten 2006). Instead, the

government school of Tanjung Pinang was opened to ‘children of respectable natives and foreign Orientals of the same status’ (Memorie, 1870: 283, cited in Putten 2006:

256). It was not until the Japanese occupation that a school would be built on Pulau

Penyengat.

6.3.3 Education under the Japanese Where the Dutch sought to control the native population by keeping them

ignorant and uneducated, the Japanese sought to control Indonesians using education

for the purposes of indoctrination. The Japanese introduced mass education open to

all Indonesians, regardless of class and gender (Thomas 1966). The expansion of

education was a key strategy to gain Indonesians’ sympathy and support for Japan’s

34 Muhammadiya started in 1912 and had 1,275 schools by 1942 (Peacock 1978). 185

political agenda. While the Japanese had briefly adopted a strategy of Nipponization

in the initial months of occupation, they realized that simply substituting the Japanese

language for Dutch was a practical impossibility (Kahin 1952). Furthermore, they had

learned from mistakes in Manchuria and northern China in the 1930s that rapid

Nipponization alienated the population. In Southeast Asia, the Japanese quickly

shifted tack, recognizing that encouraging local values and nationalist goals (at least

to some extent) would be a more effective strategy in controlling the populace

(Thomas 1966). While the long-term objective was to gradually introduce Japanese

language and values, the Malay language, or Bahasa Indonesia, became the official

language for the administration and for education above the third grade (Alisjabana

1949; Kahin 1952; Assegaf 2005). As the War Minister Hideki Tojo explained to

Japanese civil authorities in 1942 before they were sent to administrative posts

throughout Southeast Asia:

The secret of governing occupied territories lies in successfully controlling the people both physically and psychologically. The objectives of the military government can be attained only through our winning the wholehearted support of the people of the occupied lands. ... Therefore, we must respect the traditional customs and manners of the people in occupied territories. We Japanese are prone to ethnocentrism. ... One of our unfortunate traits that has not served us well has been the tendency to force others to abide by our particular customs. Many of our past failures in ruling other peoples have stemmed from attempts to impose our ways on them. (From a transcript of Tojo’s speech, October 1942, cited in Thomas 1966: 631)

While educational policies were to be implemented by civil administrators who were

professional educators recruited by the Ministry of Education in Tokyo rather than by

military men, there were no detailed instructions issued from Tokyo about how

schools in occupied territories were to be set up and what they were to teach (Thomas

1966). Each educator was to fashion their school as they saw fit in a way that carried

out the general goals of the war (Thomas 1966). 186

Although the Japanese influence on schools in the Indonesian archipelago was not uniform, there were widespread commonalities. English and French, considered the languages of the enemy, were prohibited from being taught and were replaced with Japanese language instruction. The Japanese introduced ‘strenuous, time- consuming physical activities’ and military training for secondary schools (Thomas

1966: 632) and obligatory manual-labour projects to contribute both to the war effort and to community self-sufficiency. Dutch and European history was eliminated from curricula and substituted with studies of Asia, and Japan and Indonesia in particular.

Finally, the Japanese eliminated the socially stratified school system created by the

Dutch, which separated the children of elite Europeans, less influential Europeans, titled Indonesians, non-titled Indonesians, and villagers. Schools based on class and racial distinctions were replaced with a single type of school for everyone (Thomas

1966).

While Post-Independence education in Indonesia was strongly influenced by the Japanese occupation, little has been written on how Japanese schooling affected people’s everyday lives. Kahin (1952) notes that in attempting to control the population, the Japanese pushed into every village, however he does not elaborate on what programs were implemented at the village level, who these affected, and to what extent. On Pulau Penyengat, the Japanese had a strong presence and immediately established a school and took complete control of the curriculum. While no studies have been made of Indonesian students’ school experience during the Japanese occupation, from the accounts of seniors on Pulau Penyengat, performance was a key component of Japanese education. The Japanese mobilized students to behave a certain way to create uniformity, discipline and with the hopes of ultimately changing their ideology. McVeigh (2000) has discussed the importance of discipline and 187

uniformity in doing a choreographed set of actions in contemporary Japanese schools, describing the militaristic rigour expected during many activities such as exercise.

Those I interviewed in Pulau Penyengat had similar stories about their education under the Japanese, illustrating a dramatic contrast with children’s experiences during the Dutch colonial period.

It is difficult to evaluate the extent to which the Japanese were successful in convincing Indonesian students of their ideology. Because Japan lost the war and has been greatly demonized in Indonesian history, Indonesians tend to dismiss any positive contributions the Japanese might have made. However, after interviewing several seniors, it is clear that at least on Pulau Penyengat, the Japanese were the first to introduce a modern education. While locals may not have been convinced by the superiority and mythology of the Emperor, children who attended the Japanese schools acknowledge that the schools brought discipline, a new range of nationalistic performances, and a military rigour to their lives that had a lasting impact on

Indonesian national education after Independence.

6.4 Dressing the student-citizen It is the start of Ramadan, the month in which many Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. It is also a Friday, the most important day of the week for Muslims and the day in which the weekly Senam Pagi Indonesia is performed in schools across the country. Although there is still almost an hour until school begins, many students are arriving in the school yard. It is a busy month for Muslims. Most of the students have woken up before dawn to have breakfast and pray with their families and are bored waiting for school to begin. Some of the students arrive wearing a batik shirt, their most formal school uniform worn on national holidays. Others are wearing the regular formal uniform used for the Monday flag ceremonies. Some are wearing their school tracksuits, prepared for Senam Pagi Indonesia, the Friday morning callisthenics. Still others are dressed in their Saturday uniforms of traditional Malay wear, also a symbol of Muslim faith. The students realize that they are all wearing different uniforms and ask teachers as they arrive what the proper uniform is for today. The teachers are unsure and wait until the principal arrives, who announces that during the month of Ramadan it is compulsory for all students to wear traditional Malay costumes. Many students go home to change. One boy wearing a tracksuit 188

lives too far away from the school and cannot go home. He sits on the ground in the corner of the yard humiliated and crying while he is teased by the other children for being bodoh [stupid, ignorant] for wearing the wrong uniform. (Field notes, 29 September, 2006)

This scene illustrates the complicated set of uniforms that mark students as national subjects. It also reveals the many facets of national identity expressed through uniforms, as well as the arbitrary nature of and confusion surrounding the state rules dictating which uniforms are appropriate at what time. The Indonesian state has a significant impact on the appearance of a great number of its citizens, making them into ‘mobile participants in the modern nation-state’ (Nordholt 1997a: 14;

Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Wilson 1985). This section examines national uniforms and adornment policies as they are applied in schools on Pulau Penyengat, how they have changed since Independence and how they are experienced as a key component of the performance of Indonesian identity. This section also suggests that, despite the appearance of state hegemony with regards to student dress, the intended meaning and significance of the uniforms is altered through negotiation and reinterpretation.

As discussed in Chapter Five, even before Independence, uniforms were assigned great importance in Indonesian society. During the Old Order, school uniforms similar to those introduced by the Japanese were worn, with children dressed in simple white shirts. On Pulau Penyengat, the standardization of uniforms was not thoroughly implemented due to the extreme poverty of many residents in the

1950s. Adults on Pulau Penyengat recall the simplicity of the school dress code during the Old Order:

Our uniforms were very simple... I just wore a white shirt. We did not have these handsome red and white clothes... just a white shirt. ... There were no sports shoes like these kids have these days. Many children did not have shoes... I wore sandals. (Bu Niar, 7 June, 2006)

189

In the New Order, ‘uniform fever’ spread across the nation, as examined in

Chapter Five (Nordholt 1997b, 1997a). Jakarta’s national vision of a modern,

developed and orderly society translated into the creation of policies that encouraged

the standardization and homogenization of its citizenry (Friend 2003). These policies

resulted in the rapid growth in the number of uniforms and in heightened control over

when and where each was worn. Each uniform represented a different aspect of

national ideology and has been maintained in the post-Suharto era, with the addition

of a Malay uniform for Saturday classes. What follows is the current uniform

schedule for an elementary school on Pulau Penyengat:

Table 6 - Pulau Penyengat elementary school uniform schedule Monday formal uniform: red and white, including tie and cap, socks must be white (Figure 6.1a); for Flag Ceremony leaders: White shirt and shorts/skirt, black peci [velvet cap], red cravat (Figure 6.1b) Tuesday regular uniform: white shirt, red shorts/skirt, any colour of socks (Figure 6.1c) Wednesday Pramuka35 [Scouts] uniform: khaki shirt, brown shorts/skirt, tie (figure 6.1d) Thursday regular uniform Friday sports uniform: orange tracksuit (Figure6.1e) Saturday baju Melayu [Malay clothes] (Figure 6.1g) Nat’l holidays batik shirt (Figure 6.1f) *some students have an additional uniform for supplementary Islamic school

Figure 6.1 - School uniforms on Pulau Penyengat (from left: a, b, c, d, e, f, g)

35 ‘Pramuka’ comes from the words ‘praja muda karana’, meaning ‘the young people who like to work’. Pramuka is the national Scouting organization dating back from Dutch times. Many schools in Indonesia, including those on Pulau Penyengat, are involved in Pramuka. On Pulau Penyengat, joining Pramuka is mandatory and dressing in the Pramuka uniform is compulsory, although there are few activities. Children on the island feel that Pramuka activities are boring as they usually involve a clean- up project or some other manual labour or make-work project. 190

The purchasing of each uniform is the responsibility of the parents. Since wearing the

official uniforms is a mandatory component of attending school, children whose

parents cannot afford to buy them uniforms frequently drop out of school. The many

costs of school, including uniforms, were reasons commonly cited on Pulau

Penyengat by people to explain why they had dropped out of school.

The school on Pulau Penyengat receives regular instructions from the Ministry

of Education in Jakarta as to what students must or must not wear, what cosmetics and

accessories are permissible, what hairstyles are inappropriate and explains any changes to the uniforms. Pak Sudirman, the principal of one of the schools, shared a recent memo with me that banned girls from wearing tops that were ‘too tight’ during

Friday morning exercises. Another point in the memo banned children from wearing

‘anything colourful’, including shoes, socks, and accessories (Field notes, 11 October,

2006). As analyzed in Chapter Five, these efforts create the appearance of order, discipline and compliance with the state’s agenda.

The children I spoke with generally view their uniforms with a sense of pride,

particularly the younger ones who have been looking forward to wearing a uniform.

I am six years old so I can already wear a uniform. ... I like to wear it. (Manis, 13 February, 2006)

Some of the students felt it was ‘modern’ to wear a uniform, as it was only very poor

or ‘backwards’ children such as the orang laut [sea nomads] who did not go to school

and therefore did not wear uniforms.

We wear uniforms to be modern. They are neat and clean and all the same. ... If we do not have uniforms we look like poor people or orang laut. (Linda, 13, 2006)

Several students felt that it was the uniforms themselves that made them Indonesian

and if they did not wear them, they would not be Indonesian. 191

As Indonesians, we must wear uniforms in school because this is our national culture and tradition. In other places people wear other clothes. ... but we need to show we are Indonesian, not Chinese, not Singaporean, not Malaysian. (Arista, 10 May, 2006)

This comment suggests the performativity of school uniforms as national identity and

reveals that the uniforms are naturalized as an intrinsic aspect of Indonesianness. To

Arista, the uniforms are experienced as part of a long tradition that came before her

and represent a set of assumptions regarding national ideology.

Despite attempts to impose a homogeneous Indonesian identity upon youth through uniforms, there are slippages in how uniforms are maintained that serve, in small ways, to thwart the state’s efforts. On one hand, this comes from individual students, who forget the rules about what to wear or seek to express another identity by altering or adding to their uniforms. For example, several students on Pulau

Penyengat have started to use gel to style their hair in more daring ways that push the

boundaries of acceptability as outlined in the recent memo. These ‘deviations’ from

the norms of national dress are permitted if they escape the notice of teachers or the

teachers do not see a conflict of interest. During my visits to the school, a group of

girls took to going to school wearing matching accessories to demonstrate their

friendship and to visually set them apart from the other students. One day they all

wore pink socks and matching rubber bracelets and the teachers said nothing. From

this example, it is clear that the rules in the state’s memo are selectively and unevenly

enforced. For instance, Pak Sudirman felt that the ‘tight shirt’ rule was not important

and told me he decided not to enforce the ‘no colourful clothes’ (meaning socks and

shoes) rule, since he felt it was not important except during Upacara Bendera. When I

asked about the groups of girls who had worn matching socks and bracelets to express

themselves, Pak Sudirman laughed and simply said that ‘girls are just like that’ (11

October, 2006). Such examples indicate that in some cases, state employees have the 192

agency to apply state policy regarding national dress selectively in ways they see fit.

This also illustrates that far from being a homogeneous all-powerful entity, ‘the state’ is composed of individuals who contribute to the imperfect dissemination, enforcement and maintenance of national identity. Furthermore, the state’s version of national identity is constantly negotiated, challenged, and boundaries are perpetually being redrawn.

Further disruptions to the state’s nationalization strategies were revealed in my discussions with children, to whom the meaning behind each uniform was unclear.

For example, in one discussion group with four boys at a cafe next to the square, I asked them about the khaki uniforms they were wearing that day (Group A, 7 April,

2007). It emerged that the children knew neither what the uniform was called nor what it signified. The children knew that all Indonesian students had to wear that uniform. One boy was not sure if children in other countries might also wear the

Pramuka uniform. In an effort to answer my question about their uniforms, the group asked over a dozen children passing by on their way home and none knew. The children continued to ask passing students until the principal, also the owner of the cafe, interrupted to explain that these uniforms were Pramuka, or Scouts uniforms.

However, while the students did not know the meaning of the uniforms, they did understand that the wearing of these uniforms was widespread and that the order came dari atas, or ‘from the top’, rather than just from their principal, their kelurahan or their province.

Other children were mildly critical or displayed a lack of enthusiasm for the large number of uniforms, although this was not manifested in any outward expression. 193

We have so many uniforms – it makes me confused! I do not care if we have so many, maybe one or two is enough. One for every day and one for ceremonies. Yes, that is enough. (Gary, 13 February, 2006)

In Gary’s comment, it is clear that he does not enjoy wearing all the different

uniforms, although he does not openly resist. His lack of enthusiasm reveals cracks in

the state’s hegemony, for if the state was completely successful, Gary would be more passionate about the uniforms and what they represent. That Gary continues to grudgingly wear a different uniform to school nearly every day of the week suggests wearing uniforms is more of an empty performance than a deep commitment to and passion for the nation.

The group’s answers illustrate that while the state attempts to inculcate students with nationalist ideology through dictating the clothes they wear on six days of the week, the state’s intended meaning can be lost on the students. As discussed in

Chapter Two, Sen and Hill (2000) make the point that the social, political, and

cultural context of reception is crucial. As discussed in Chapter Two, they

demonstrate the impotency of the propaganda on the military’s internet web page

when no one reads it and illustrate how meanings can be interpreted in a variety of

unintended ways, as in the example of the U.S. television character MacGyver being

widely interpreted as a ‘defender of human rights’. Similarly, the boys’ ignorance

about the uniforms is perhaps not fruitfully understood as resistance, which implies a

level of conscious decision. It does, however, illustrate how meanings get lost or

ignored in ways the state cannot anticipate or control. Similarly, the group of girls

wearing matching socks and bracelets to distinguish themselves and mark them as a

group do not do so with the intention of challenging national identity but rather to

perform another identity simultaneously. 194

Parker points out that school uniforms, particularly the ‘smart uniforms of red and white, the colours of the national flag’ are ‘advertising the nation-state’ (Parker

2003: 207). In this observation she makes the valuable point that even if the students themselves do not understand the significance or meaning of their ‘nationalized’ bodies, they appear united and complicit with the state’s policies to the general public, ultimately serving to legitimize and normalize them. Furthermore, the state gives off the appearance of being present and active in the community.

6.5 Senam Pagi Indonesia As introduced in Chapter Five and in the short ethnography at the start of this chapter, Senam Pagi Indonesia is the state callisthenics carried out each Friday morning by state workers and students. Since the Japanese occupation, morning callisthenics have been a compulsory component of the Indonesian school week.

While the choreography has changed, the strategy of instilling national ideology through assembling all students at every school across the country to simultaneously perform has not.

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Figure 6.2 – A page from the national Senam Pagi Indonesia instruction manual (1960s)

As can be seen in Figures 6.3 and 6.4, the choreography of Senam Pagi

Indonesia has changed over the decades. New choreography is constantly being

developed in Jakarta, along with more contemporary accompanying music so that the

exercises feel fresh and modern (Agus, 7 May, 2007). If Upacara Bendera is the

formal, official side of the nation, Senam Pagi Indonesia is the informal and fun side.

Videos CDs are issued periodically by the Ministry of Education featuring Senam

Pagi experts in Jakarta teaching the latest moves.

In contrast to the highly varied way in which Senam Pagi Indonesia is carried

out by various government offices and across various ranks of civil servants, schools

on Pulau Penyengat are consistent in organizing this activity weekly. Senam Pagi

Indonesia is monitored carefully in the schools on Pulau Penyengat, sending several

teachers per school for periodic training workshops in the provincial capital where

they are instructed by trained Senam Pagi experts from Jakarta. On occasion,

someone from the provincial level will come to Pulau Penyengat schools to monitor 196

the exercises and ensure that they are being conducted properly following ‘national’

standards (Field notes, 11 May, 2006).

In Senam Pagi Indonesia, students are lined up in rows in the schoolyard

facing the flagpole to form a huge grid, like a military drill. The formation prevents

the children from bumping into each other but also makes it apparent if someone is

not following the instructions. Teachers, teachers in training, and select senior

students stand around the edges of the grid, correcting individual students who fall out of their line or are getting distracted. Through the spectacle of over one hundred children in identical orange tracksuits, the school yard is temporarily transformed into

a national space.

Figure 6.3 - Senam Pagi Indonesia in the school yard

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Figure 6.4 - Senam Pagi Indonesia, Indonesia's Morning Exercise

Although writing in the context of fitness classes in Japanese schools,

McVeigh (2000: 52) conveys an essence these exercises share with Senam Pagi

Indonesia:

These squads moved here and there, as if part of a miniature army on maneuvers. The point of the exercises seemed not to be to compete against each other nor to demonstrate their physical abilities, but rather to learn how to take orders, how to be mobilized and how to be moved in small units. (McVeigh 2000: 52)

Similarly, the purpose of Senam Pagi Indonesia is less for health reasons than to teach students how to follow instructions obediently and how to be mobilized as a unit. This is confirmed by the principal as he elaborates on the purposes of Senam Pagi

Indonesia (11 May, 2006):

Sarah: Why do Indonesians do Senam Pagi Indonesia? Sudirman: We do Senam Pagi Indonesia so that our bodies are strong and we are healthy. ... So that children are strong and active. Sarah: Why not get the students to play soccer or volleyball or other sports? Sudirman: They do other sports as well. Senam Pagi is a way to unite people. All of us as students have done Senam Pagi Indonesia. Sarah: So Senam Pagi is a type of national strategy? 198

Sudirman: Yes. Students can play volley, badminton, soccer, here and there in different places... these are more individualistic. Everyone comes together for Senam Pagi.

Rather than being an opportunity for an egalitarian activity, Senam Pagi Indonesia

reinforces a military-like, regimented social hierarchy which positions the state at the top. Students themselves are positioned within the hierarchy, with senior students

appointed as ‘Senam Pagi masters’ employed in the instruction and surveillance of

junior students.

Senam Pagi Indonesia serves as a metonym for the nation: a team of

individuals who surrender their individuality for the nation, taking instructions, and

working together in a functional hierarchy. The weekly event reflects broader national

goals to ‘cultivate a national sports culture and improve the quality of Indonesian

people’ while ‘cultivating national pride’ (Lumintang et al. 2005: 166-167). Senam

Pagi Indonesia is performative in that it serves to reinforce hierarchical norms in the context of the school. Its repetition throughout one’s schooling serves to convince

citizens, long after their schooling is over, that the nation and Senam Pagi Indonesia-

like group callisthenics are intertwined.

Although the school children on Pulau Penyengat who participate weekly in

Senam Pagi Indonesia have a range of interpretations as to why this activity exists,

they are all aware that it is an Indonesian national activity:

Sarah: Who does Senam Pagi Indonesia?

Group C (13 February, 2006):

Every student and pegawai negeri [civil servant] has to do Senam Pagi. Children from primary school up to high school. People across Indonesia do it ... every Friday morning. As the above comments suggest, there is the understanding that Senam Pagi is an

activity that is both widely practiced and mandatory. There is also a distinct sense that 199

it is mandated not by their teachers or their principal but by a higher authority. While

many were unsure what exactly Senam Pagi was for, some students had several ideas:

So we can be fit and healthy, not fat.

Because it is mandatory – every student has to do it.

Our lessons are very boring! We will be bored and sleepy if we do not get to play outside ... like football, Senam Pagi, games... Group C (13 February, 2006)

Students’ understanding of Senam Pagi Indonesia reveals that they believe it

is done for health reasons, for the reason that it is simply a mandatory part of being a

student, and as a respite from the classroom. Many students enjoy Senam Pagi as

much as other non-classroom activities. The atmosphere is relaxed and the teachers do

not reprimand students who do not follow along.

As with the civil servants, Senam Pagi has become a gendered activity that is

seen as somewhat feminine. It was apparent that many of the older boys were not as

enthusiastic about mastering the choreography as the older girls. Despite their

disinterest and lacklustre participation, the boys were not reprimanded, nor were they

expected to improve the next week. The most advanced students at Senam Pagi were

older girls. Some of these girls practiced at home with Senam Pagi VCDs and with

their friends after school and were nominated by their teachers to act as Senam Pagi

leaders to stand at the front of the class to lead the exercises.

The analysis of theatricality in Senam Pagi Indonesia benefits from Goffman’s approach to the notion of performance. The yard is temporarily transformed into a stage on which all must conform to a set of scripted actions. Offstage in the staff room and on the street, no one is watching. The teachers who have decided not to participate are ‘offstage’ in the staff room chatting. In contrast, teachers in training strategically perform the moves with great care and students who wish to please their 200

teachers make a point of trying hard to gain favour through a strong performance in

Senam Pagi Indonesia. While the schoolyard is located at the edge of a public path,

there are no spectators. The performance is primarily targeted at the performers

themselves. Occasionally, adult members of the community may join Senam Pagi

Indonesia at the school, not out of a desire to express patriotism, but rather for their

own health goals:

We join because we want to be fit. My friend will get married so she wants to lose weight! (Zuwirna, 7 May, 2006)

While Zuwirna and her friend are aware that they are in effect sneaking into a national

activity for schoolchildren, the nationalistic aspect is ignored as they strategically use

Senam Pagi for their own purposes. Despite a level of consciousness about their

participation and the purpose of the exercises, there is a subconscious element in

Zuwirna and her friend’s participation. After years of participating in Senam Pagi

Indonesia, it is intuitive that the exercises are a viable method of getting fit. As

discussed earlier, the actual level of fitness required in Senam Pagi is extremely low.

However, on an unconscious level, Zuwirna and her friend do not question the state’s

definition of Senam Pagi as ‘exercise’.

6.6 Upacara Bendera Upacara Bendera is the most formal and consciously nationalistic of

performances in which students on Pulau Penyengat engage. The ceremony is

conducted much like that conducted by civil servants as seen in Chapter 5, with more

emphasis on the pedagogical aspects of the ceremony. It is conducted with a

thoroughness and rigour not seen in other aspects of schooling on Pulau Penyengat and teachers who are often late in arriving at work are not late for Upacara Bendera

(Field notes, 11 May, 2006). During the ceremony, students are taught how to behave 201

in a way that is ‘appropriate’ for a national ceremony. They are also instructed on national trivia and inculcated with a sense of hierarchy. In what follows, I describe the

Upacara Bendera at an elementary school in Pulau Penyengat.

Over one hundred primary school students walk or are escorted on the backs of motorcycles through the village to their primary school early Monday morning. I am told that classes normally begin at 8:15 a.m. but on Mondays, students are instructed to come to school early for the Upacara Bendera, or flag ceremony. While this ceremony is performed every week, there is confusion as to what time it starts. Some students and teachers tell me it starts at 7:30 a.m., others say at 7:45 a.m. Many of the children come to school early and mill around in groups with their friends or play games. As the children arrive in the school yard, they bend over and press their foreheads against the fingers of the outstretched hands, or sayang, to any teachers they see in the yard. The children are dressed smartly in white shirts and red skirts for girls and red shorts for boys, red ties, red and white caps, white socks and black shoes. Students playing special roles in the ceremony wear all white, with a red neck puff, and black velvet peci, the same ensemble worn by Sukarno and Hatta when they proclaimed Independence. The teachers wear their crisp daily khaki safari suits (Figure 6.6) or their more formal national uniform of matching batik shirts (Figure 6.9).

Figure 6.5 - Upacara Bendera, Flag Ceremony - students

202

Several teachers and older students are arranging the students in lines at one end of the school yard while the rest of the teachers are chatting in the staff room. The school has two wings that form an ‘L’ along the large school yard. About two thirds of the students stand in lines to form the third side of a square, with the other third forming the fourth side of the square. In the centre is the flag pole. Most of the teachers are in the staff room having tea while the students are being assembled by several of the older students. Once the children are in formation, a female teacher shouts loudly across the yard to the children in a military style, drowning out the sounds of the other teachers socializing. She warms the children up for the ceremony by asking some important elements in Indonesian national history36:

Teacher: The founding principle for Indonesia is Panca-.... Class: -sila! Teacher: And how many tenets are there of Pancasila? Class: Five! Teacher: and Pancasila was created in? Class: ‘45! Teacher: Created by President...? Class: Sukarno! Teacher: And Sukarno is the father of Indo-...? Class: -nesia! Teacher: Class 1 to 6 – do the ceremony nicely! Teacher: Class 1 – do you hear me? Class: Yes! Teacher: Class 2 - What year did we gain Independence? Class: ’45! Teacher: What year? Class: ’45! Teacher: How many years have we been independent? Class: 61! Teacher: How many? Class: 61! Teacher: Who said 70? Teacher: Anyone who thinks 70? Class 3 – are you ready for the Flag Ceremony? Class: Yes! Teacher: Class 4? Class: Yes! Teacher: Class 5? Class: Yes!

36 The teachers often use a particular method in which the students who are asked shout out answers in unison and to finish the last word or syllable of the teacher’s sentence. This has also been noted in Bjork’s (2005) book Indonesian Education: Teachers, Schools and Central Bureaucracy in which he contrasts methods of teaching at state schools with private schools as well as in Parker’s book From Subjects to Citizens (2003: 228-230).

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Teacher: Class 6? Class: Yes! Teacher: If you are ready then we will begin the Flag Ceremony!

The only sounds that can be heard are roosters crowing and teachers chatting outside the staff room. When the shouting teacher finishes, she and the other teachers form a line along one wing of the school facing the flagpole and the students across the yard. Four students dressed identically in white line up next to, but a distance from the teachers. This line of teachers and students forms the Upacara Bendera elite (Figure 6.6).

Figure 6.6 - The Flag Ceremony elite

The Komanden, or Commander, of the ceremony is a ten-year-old girl, who stands in the line of ceremonial elite holding a microphone. She directs the ceremony, reading a standardized introduction outlining the components of the ceremony to come. The Komanden orders one of the troop leaders to address the ‘troops’ and conduct the ‘inspection’. The student marches until she is across the yard in front of the student body. Everyone is silent while she shouts commands:

Berdiri! [Attention!] Hormat! [Salute!] Gerak! [March!] Istirahat di tempat! [At ease!]

204

The Komanden calls on the girl and two boys beside her to begin the flag raising part of the ceremony. The girl is the leader and maneuvers them to the flag pole with a series of commands. As they are not allowed to march on an angle, they walk out into the yard until they are in line with the flag pole then make a 90 degree turn and march until they reach the flagpole. There is a ceremonial unfolding of the flag. The students attach it to the pole.

Figure 6.7 - Raising the flag

Komanden: The flag is ready! Salute!

There is complete silence and everyone is very serious. All students and teachers salute the flag. I also salute the flag. I have been told earlier that I may watch and photograph the ceremony on the condition that I salute for the duration of the flag being pulled up the flag pole. One of the children formally conducts the students in singing Indonesia Raya while the flag is raised. The students in white are pulling up the flag slowly to time it with the end of the song. The song is about to finish and the flag is hastily yanked up to the top of the pole. The Komanden orders the students to stand at ease. Some students are showing signs of restlessness. The Komanden begins to read out the introduction to the ceremony that she had read earlier until a teacher comes over and tells her what she should be reading. She then calls out the five tenets of Pancasila loudly through the microphone. The girl next to her reads the opening of the Constitution.

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Figure 6.8 - Reading the opening of the Constitution

Figure 6.9 - Upacara Bendera, Flag Ceremony

206

Two boys from the youngest class have placed their caps on backwards and are looking around and giggling (Figure 6.10). The principal emerges from the lines of teachers and climbs onto a wooden box next to the flagpole facing the students. He gives a speech to the children about the struggle for Independence. It is now uncomfortably hot and the children are sweaty and fidgeting. One girl sways back and forth dizzily and a teacher takes her to sit down in one of the classrooms under a fan. The principal goes on to discuss the ways in which the students can improve themselves for their nation. He covers common national themes of service to the state, development and national values. He talks about the moral obligation the children have to carry out their duties as good citizens, such as obeying their parents, improving their bodies through eating healthy food, doing exercise, bathing regularly, and improving their minds through studying hard, reading books, and not watching cartoons too often. A boy tells a teacher he feels sick and is also taken to a classroom to sit under a fan. The principal continues to lecture the children on their general duties: to do their homework, to study English hard so they can be maju [advanced], not bodoh [stupid, ignorant]. He gives anecdotes about students who did something naughty when they should have obeyed their parents. When his lecture comes to an end, about a dozen students are ordered to stand in a line next to the flagpole, visible to the rest of the school. These are students that the teachers have noticed have not properly obeyed the dress code for Upacara Bendera. The boys who had put their caps on backwards were there, including several children who had worn colourful socks that day, rather than the mandatory white. Another child did not have shoes that were considered appropriate. These students are scolded one by one in front of the rest of the students until some are close to tears. After the ceremony ends at about 8:15, students are given time to rest before classes begin. The teachers retire to the staff room for snacks, tea and cigarettes and the children play in groups or buy sweetened ice from the man who runs a little canteen on the school grounds. Classes should have begun at 8:30 but the play time stretches on until almost 9:00. (Field notes, 11 May, 2006)

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Figure 6.10 – Minor non-conformity at the Flag Ceremony

The ceremony temporarily nationalizes the space and, for the duration of the ceremony, the school yard is referred to as the Lapangan Upacara, or the ‘ceremonial field’. Significantly, it is through performance that the space is transformed into a sacred, national place. The creation of a temporary sacred national space cites earlier ceremonies that, through repetition and over time, have become a normalized performance of national identity. There is a sense of exclusivity that sharply demarcates who are the performers (those on the Lapangan Upacara) and those who

are not. Unlike in Senam Pagi Indonesia, members of the public may not join in this

performance of sacred nationalism. The performers are positioned as being the ‘new’

(modern, disciplined, uniformed, powerful) exemplary citizens to which the audience

(positioned as kampungan, undisciplined, un-uniformed) can aspire.

Here again, the performers’ bodies are a metonym for the state: they are

visually homogenous and move together in coordinated, ordered mass. This is

particularly apparent in national televised Upacara Bendera events broadcast on

national holidays. Students from each province are chosen to participate in the 208

ceremony in Jakarta. Selections are made based on students’ height and bodily

dimensions. Successful students are trim and their heights fall within a three

centimetre range (Agus, 7 May, 2007). The specified height is in the range of about

165-167 centimetres, a height much taller than average. These official dimensions are

widely known and exclude most students, particularly in regions with populations that tend to be shorter. Significantly, the national ideal does not attempt to be inclusive and celebrate a heterogeneous-looking population in Upacara Bendera. In such televised ceremonies, the powerful image of hundreds of identical uniformed bodies represents the strength of the state.

Acting out a set of choreographed nationalistic moves has long been a key part of the school curriculum. Conscious performance is a strategy many participants employ to survive Upacara Bendera without getting noticed and singled out for scolding. This conscious level of performance is most effectively demonstrated by one of the seniors on Pulau Penyengat in the context of the Japanese occupation. As he explains, appearing to respect the Japanese flag and the emperor was crucial to surviving national ceremonies:

I stood up as straight as I could and sang loud. We were not allowed to just [mouths words with no sound] you know! We had to memorize them all in the Japanese language, which is very difficult… We saw the Japanese flag rise … we had to look towards Japan and if we were not very serious and absolutely quiet we would be beaten (Pak Hari, August 16, 2006).

What is key in Pak Hari’s recollection is that he performs knowingly, that is, acting in a particular way was a conscious strategy. The memories seniors hold of school were of performances, the bodily actions they were taught and made to repeat again and again against the constant threat of punishment. Each memory involved repetition: counting in Japanese in unison, marching, learning how to react to Japanese military

commands, saluting the flag and so on. 209

Pak Hari’s comments are strikingly relevant to today’s Upacara Bendera.

Seniors who attended school during the Japanese Occupation were able to sing the entire Japanese anthem as well as enact various military moves. Pak Hari suggests that many aspects of school after Independence remained the same:

After Independence ... there were only a few changes at school. We did not learn Japanese anymore but we still sang all the same songs – they just changed the lyrics into Indonesian.

Pak Hari stands up with his back straight, his face suddenly focused and serious, with an expression of solemn pride like a soldier in line for inspection. He turns and faces the direction of Japan and loudly sings a nationalistic Japanese song, looking off into the distance. He then repeats the same song, only this time in Bahasa Indonesia.

See? It’s the same song! So many things we [Indonesians] got from the Japanese. ... We still march like this...

He stands up and marches several paces with his back straight. (Paki Hari, 17 August, 2006)

Pak Hari’s comments reveal that an important aspect of school under the Japanese required the active performances of the students and that many of these aspects were maintained after Independence. The continuity he describes suggests that when national performances in Indonesia were developed, they were citing the already- familiar performances of Japanese identity. It can be understood as performative in the necessity of repetition or ‘citational practices’ (Butler 1997), which perpetuate their meaning and maintain the power associated. Through repetition, meanings embedded in these performances, such as hierarchy and respect for a higher bureaucratic power, are normalized to the performers.

There is the local sense that the ceremony has remained the same since

Independence, that despite many changes in political regimes, economics, and so on in Pulau Penyengat, the school experience in teaching nationalism has not changed. 210

Sarah: If I watched Upacara Bendera here 30 years ago and again today, what would be the difference?

Nothing is different – only the uniforms are more sharp/tidy. (Bu Niar, 7 June, 2006)

It was the same. Nothing has changed. The ritual is the same as before. But now people don’t have as much spirit as they used to and they are not as disciplined. The teachers are often late... sometimes even for Upacara Bendera! Their attitude is not serious enough ... too “relax” ... too kampung ... (Pak Sudirman, 15 February, 2006)

I think the ceremony is more elaborate these days. There is more advanced equipment, especially in government offices ... there are speakers, more uniforms... Basically it is the same because it is a national tradition. It cannot be changed. It is something fundamental to the Republic of Indonesia. (Rosyani, 16 February, 2006)

The ceremony is the same ... national rituals cannot change. ... maybe the uniforms have changed somewhat but the basic principles and program do not change. The ritual reflects the principles of Pancasila ... those cannot be changed. ... For example, a school or office cannot change Upacara Bendera. There is a standard book where the rules of Upacara Bendera are written so we can all be the same, so that the ceremony is standard throughout Indonesia. ... If we all do different things ... oh no! This means Indonesia will break into many pieces! (Haz, 16 October, 2006)

Despite the gravity of Upacara Bendera and the rigid performances expected

of the children with the threat of punishment, the students do not become nationalistic

robots. During the ceremony itself, they find small ways of expressing themselves and

finding humour during what is meant to be a serious, emotional moment of national

reflection. In Figure 6.10, several students have put their caps on backwards, an act that elicited giggles until they were caught and scolded. Also, while the ceremony is performed weekly for the duration of one’s education, students often have difficulty remembering simple aspects of the ceremony, suggesting that many of them are not paying attention. For example, while the five tenets of Pancasila are read out loud every Monday at the Upacara Bendera and their school lessons include the study of

Pancasila philosophy, many students I spoke with could not remember all five tenets

(Field notes – Group B, 10 May, 2006). 211

The students chosen to help with the running of the ceremony are selected by

the teachers. As one teacher says,

We choose children who are well-behaved and are good in school, do their homework with diligence. Children like this, who are responsible and show respect for the ceremony... this is important. They need to be taught to respect the Red and White... and they need to learn to be disciplined and maju. [progressive] ... These students are examples for the others to see. (Haji Tuti, 11 October, 2006)

Students who are selected are those who are able to behave in an ideal way:

subservient and respectful of authority and the students themselves know the

characteristics needed to be selected as an Upacara Bendera leader:

Students who are polite and obey their teachers. Students who are not naughty and know the rules. (Group B – May 10, 2006)

I suggest that through repetitive performance such as in Upacara Bendera

several concepts are inculcated in students. First, they learn a sense of hierarchy and

where they fit into this hierarchy. Second, they gain an understanding of what one

must do to rise in the hierarchy. It is the students who are best able to perform as

subservient who excel and are asked to represent the school at regional Upacara

Bendera events on national holidays. This is not to suggest that students are simply strategic in their performances in order to advance themselves. Third, despite many students’ boredom or strategic engagement with Upacara Bendera, it still successfully evokes feelings of national pride and connectedness in the students. This illustrates multiple layers of performance that occur simultaneously: one that is conscious and, at times, strategic and a deeper, subconscious level at which there is an emotional sense of unity and belonging, both of which serve to perpetuate national identity and an acceptance of the ceremony as permanent, unchanging and essential. 212

6.7 ‘Ethnic’ education As has been examined in Chapters Four and Five, the Indonesian state’s philosophy of ethnic diversity is encapsulated in the national motto of ‘Unity in

Diversity’. This concept has been translated into specific policies designed to direct

allegiances away from regional identities and inculcate in students a sense of the

nation. While the Old Order government did not spend a great deal of attention and

resources on inculcating ‘Unity in Diversity’, the New Order government actively

‘promoted a new understanding of being Indonesian … premised on being modern, classified and orderly. Indonesians could see themselves on display in Taman Mini in

Jakarta where every ethnic group had its quaint distinctive culture, all joined together

through the homogenizing experience of a national superculture of modernity’ (Owen

2005: 238). Since the 1970s, a key part of the national school curriculum has been the

study of the various cultures in Indonesia. Taken from one of many illustrated

publications and textbooks depicting ethnicity, Figure 6.11 shows the state’s Taman

Mini-style understanding of ethnicity through representing each province as a

costume set for a man and woman, a dance, a house and a weapon.

213

Figure 6.11 - 'Unity in Diversity' text (Rahimsyah 2007)

Figures 6.12 and 6.13 depict the ethnic costume displays at the National

Museum in Taman Mini. Each mannequin couple is dressed in a wedding costume representative of their province of origin. While internal variation and diversity exists in each province, this is conveyed neither through the displays at the museum nor through the state’s philosophy, both of which imply an uncontested, homogenous provincial identity that fits neatly and unproblematically into the pantheon of national cultures.

214

Figure 6.12 - Museum Nasional at Taman Mini - ethnic costume displays

Figure 6.13 - Ethnic costume displays – Taman Mini

In this section I examine three aspects of education which serve, through

performance, to enforce the state’s vision of Taman Mini-style ‘Unity in Diversity’ on

students: costumes students wear in the National Day Parade, Saturday school

uniforms, and traditional games taught in P.E. class. These aspects of ‘ethnic

education’ teach students about Indonesia’s many cultures as if each culture is 215

bounded and exists discretely in its own province. Drawn from the same philosophy

as Taman Mini, ethnic costumes are a key way by which students are taught about the

many ethnic groups. This section examines the performative aspects of ‘ethnic

education’ that occur outside of textbooks and classroom lessons.

A large portion of parades to commemorate Hari Kemerdekaan [Independence

Day] consists of high school students. Schools from around the province participate,

with each school following a program set by the state. Each high school from the

surrounding islands sends a contingent of students to travel to Tanjung Pinang for the

parade. Because Pulau Penyengat does not have a high school, students travel to

Tanjung Pinang daily for classes and in the parade, they participate together with

classmates from Tanjung Pinang.

Each school is introduced with a banner carried by students in their formal

uniforms. The schools looks nearly identical: students are dressed in costumes

representing various aspects of national ideology such as national sports programs,

pembangunan programs (as examined in Chapter Five), and ‘Unity in Diversity’. The

intention of the parade is for students to perform various facets of national identity

(Pak Acay, 13 August, 2006). The costumes featured in the parade display how the

state imagines itself and how it wishes to be seen by its citizenry, rather than serving

as a chance for students to display how they themselves imagine the Indonesian

nation and what is valuable or special to them about Indonesia.

In schools that have no libraries or computers, significant resources have been

allocated towards collecting costumes with which students act out the national

concept of ‘Unity in Diversity’. The students are selected by their schools to

participate and there is an attempt to fill each province’s costume set with students

whose family originates from there. Since there is a high level of diversity among 216

students in high schools in Riau, it is usually possible to have Batak students wearing

Batak clothes, Javanese wearing Javanese clothes, and so on. However, for other costumes of provinces not represented in the student body, students are assigned an ethnic costume with the aim of matching their facial features and skin colour to how the students imagine the ethnicities look. For example, students whose skin is considered dark will be put in ‘tribal’ costumes from the ‘primitive’ provinces.

Students with lighter skin and more delicate features will wear costumes from Java and Bali. One woman in her 20s recalled being asked to participate in the parade dressed as a Sundanese (West Javanese) when she was a high school student.

I was very happy to be asked to be Sundanese! Sundanese women are known for their beauty and for their fair skin. ... Thank god I was not asked to be an Irian Jayan or Papuan! [laughs] (Veronika, 13 August, 2006)

Racial features are openly assigned value and reflect widely-held assumptions in

Indonesia about the existence of a hierarchy of ethnicities that links physical features and way of life to one’s intellect and potential.

What follows is an ethnography of the parade featuring students dressing in costumes representing the provinces.

The parade has gone on for hours with dozens of schools parading hundreds of costumed students. It is now past noon and the schools continue to pass. There is no shade and it is getting hotter. Yet another high school approaches led by a teenage girl wearing her formal uniform complete with tie and cap. She is serious and stares straight ahead like a marching soldier and holds a sign with the words ‘Bhinneka Tunggal Ika’, or ‘Unity in Diversity’ written on it.

217

Figure 6.14 - Students display 'Unity in Diversity' at the National Day parade

The students are lined up in rows behind their modern leader. The costumes are elaborate and professional. They are not homemade and certainly not made by the students themselves. Many of the girls wear elaborate bridal make-up. The students do nothing but walk side-by-side in an orderly fashion with their costume partner. While they walk, the students chat, but there is no vocal component to their performance. Spectators standing around me guess the province represented and debate over some they cannot recognize. “...Jambi Province... Bali... Central Java... no – Yogyakarta. Kalimantan.... West or Central?...”

218

Figure 6.15 - 'Unity in Diversity' on parade

Figure 6.16 - 'Unity in Diversity' on parade

219

Figure 6.17 - 'Unity in Diversity' on parade

This parade demonstrates the state’s control over how ethnicity is expressed

and illustrates how students are a key part of how the state communicates this to the

citizenry and to the student performers themselves. In wearing costumes that support

the Taman Mini-style state philosophy, each ethnicity is equal, but equally superficial:

culturally diverse provinces – and culture itself – are reduced to material culture, in

this case, a costume. Students perform a de-politicized pastiche of ethnicity that

serves to naturalize official nationalism. While the students are clearly conscious they

are performing an ethnicity (often not their own) through dressing in an elaborate

costume in public, they are performatively reproducing the state’s ideology.

This type of public performance of ‘Unity in Diversity’ began in the New

Order. Due to recent decentralization policies and the formation of Riau Islands

Province, there has been a heightened sense of ‘ethnic’ identity, albeit in a way that

tends to fit into Taman Mini-style categories. This heightened sense of ‘ethnic’

identity has resulted in recent changes in Pulau Penyengat schools that encourage

students to perform a version of Malayness. In what follows, I examine a new 220

addition to the set of school uniforms and new activities in physical education (P. E.)

classes, two examples of recent strategies designed to enlist students to perform

national identity through a Taman Mini-style ethnicity in educational contexts.

The first strategy is the recent addition to the weekly uniform schedule to include the wearing of ethnic costumes to school on Saturdays, a policy that was introduced in Chapter 5 in the context of state workplaces. Although many children on Pulau Penyengat have a parent who is ethnically Bugis, Javanese, Chinese, and so on, they are not permitted to wear any other traditional clothes aside from the official provincial uniform of baju kurung for girls and the baju Melayu for boys (Figure

6.1g).

Students felt that the new Malay clothes were confusing and they were

worried about wearing the wrong uniform on the wrong day. Many children

complained about how hot Malay clothes are. However, several teenagers felt that the

Malay clothes were a good idea and enthused that every Saturday students across

Indonesia were all wearing different cultural costumes:

Wearing baju Melayu [Malay clothes] is good – it reminds us of our culture and traditions so we do not forget we are Malays. Every Saturday students across Indonesia wear their traditional costume... Javanese wear batik and kebaya [form-fitting lace blouse], etc. (Ninik, 17 February, 2006)

Children should be proud to be Malay, not ashamed! ... we don’t wear Malay clothes everyday because we are Indonesian, not Riau separatists! And Malay clothes are very hot! ... We wear baju kurung once a week as a sort of symbol of our culture. (Lela, 17 February, 2006)

Why are Malay clothes worn in schools? So that children will know that they are Malay – not Javanese, not Batak. (Ina, 18 March, 2006)

The comments about the Malay uniforms convey an element of conscious display.

This is no longer what people generally wear except on special occasions (wedding,

funerals, parties, formal wear) and when they wish to project their Malayness. 221

The second strategy is the recent introduction of indigenous games into P.E.

classes on Pulau Penyengat. Children on Pulau Penyengat no longer play the indigenous games their parents and grandparents played in their free time and prefer

watching TV, doing karaoke in their living rooms, and reading comic books (see

Chapter Seven). However, local games have become part of the school curriculum

and part of National Day celebrations. Games such as walking on coconut shells are

taught to children formally at school on Pulau Penyengat (see Figures 6.18 and 6.19).

These are simple village games traditionally played by children because the materials

were easy to find and the equipment could be made by the children themselves. The

worry of lost culture is tempered by the realization that their children need a more

modern education that is not available on Pulau Penyengat.

Figure 6.18 - Indigenous games taught in P.E. class - walking on coconut shells

222

Figure 6.19 - Indigenous games in after school team activities - takro lesssons

Educators on Pulau Penyengat are enthusiastic and somewhat nostalgic about recent

‘ethnic’ additions to the curriculum.

This is part of Malay culture. ... The physical education class until now was standardized across all of Indonesia – all students were taught approximately the same things... Senam Pagi Indonesia, volleyball, etc. So the purpose of these cultural activities is to teach something that is local, something important to our local culture. (Pak Sudirman, 11 May, 2006)

Teachers on Pulau Penyengat feel these changes are important:

Wearing baju kurung is good ... playing Malay games is good... it’s good for the children... they will not completely lose their culture. They will be made aware of it and hold on to it. (Fatimah, 18 March, 2006)

Through ‘Unity in Diversity’, ethnicity and culture are co-opted by the state

for nation-building purposes. As has been examined in this section, ‘Unity in

Diversity’ is played out through the bodies of students on Pulau Penyengat who are

obliged to perform national identity through a pastiche of ethnic culture. The aspects

of culture that the state seeks to nurture are apolitical and non-threatening to the

concept of Indonesia. In the case of student performances of Malayness on Pulau

Penyengat, Malay culture is reduced to a few activities that make ‘cultural difference 223

a matter of only superficial importance’ (Parker 1992a: 23-24). The message

communicated is that citizens have external differences in dress and customs, but

these are not in conflict with their identity as Indonesians, and even serve to underpin

Taman Mini formulations of national identity.

6.8 Summary In this chapter, I have demonstrated how schools are important sites for the inculcation of national identity. In addition to curriculum, as explicated by other scholars, performance and nation-building in educational contexts in Indonesia are

intertwined in important ways. I suggest that identities that are already familiar

through repetition are performatively acted out in a way that serves to normalize and

constantly recreate them. The four examples of uniforms, Senam Pagi Indonesia,

Upacara Bendera and ‘ethnic’ education illustrate how the state discourse on national

identity is not taught simply as a set of abstract concepts in textual form but is also expected to be maintained bodily through performance. For example, as demonstrated, the Upacara Bendera teaches students about national values and

history through re-enactments of key moments in national history. Through the citation of recognizable acts (made so through repetition), national performances serve as a key way in which children imagine the nation and their role in it.

Through school-based performances, students are also taught their relationship to the state and their position in the nation. In my analysis of the empirical examples in the chapter, I suggest that a social hierarchy is reproduced in national ceremonies that position the student body and staff at various levels in the hierarchy. Those

placed higher in the hierarchy hold more important positions in national

performances, as can be distinguished by their clothes and how they are positioned in

performances. 224

As has been examined, the visual standardization of students is a priority. The

state has set rules and protocol as to how students should dress and how they should

behave in an attempt to control and standardize its citizenry. As has been shown in the

empirical work in this chapter, the attempts at standardization demonstrate that the

state does not nurture individuality or different interpretations of the nation. The

individual’s identity is realized through official categories of diversity that serve to

support the state. The visual standardization of students through uniforms and

performances also creates the appearance of complicity with the state and the

impression that state presence is everywhere.

Through investigating students’ views of the national performances in school,

it is apparent that, despite attempts at standardization, performances hold multiple

meanings to the performers. Parker (2002: 3) points out that despite the hegemonic

way in which the education system has attempted to create Indonesian citizens, the

hegemony is not total and schools do not always produce ‘clone-like, model

Indonesian citizens’. The process of inculcating national ideology presents many

opportunities for ‘slippage’ in the maintenance and perpetuation of national ideology.

For example, the teachers’ understanding of the national ideology, their ability to teach students how to perform as ideal citizens, and the ability of students to understand the material all serve to produce variation in the state’s intended version of national identity. At times, students misunderstand the intention of state nationalization practices and negotiate new local meanings for national performances.

They may strategically comply or resist or reinterpret official meanings for a variety of purposes: to avoid punishment, to impress teachers, or to gain a better social standing among their peers. However, through the empirical examples, it is clear that the state’s inculcation of national identity has been largely successful. While students 225

may not enjoy the methods of inculcation or may not fully understand all aspects of their performances, the key ideas of Indonesian nationalism such as ‘Unity in

Diversity’, a diversity that is defined by the state, are unchallenged by students on

Pulau Penyengat.

226

Chapter 7 – The Nation at Play

7.1 Introduction Today is Sunday on Pulau Penyengat and the sun is sinking below the treeline. Crowds have gathered in the square next to the mosque to watch young men and boys playing takro with a rattan ball. The spectators socialize and cheer when a player kicks his foot over his head and slams the ball to the ground over the net. Clusters of people sit on the edge of the stage next to the square chatting and watching teenage boys and girls rehearsing a Malay dance. The dancers are accompanied by the energetic beat of the gendang, played by student drummers and their teacher. Down the street, two teams of middle- aged women wearing shiny football-style uniforms are playing a game of volleyball. (Field notes, 16 July 2006)

Initially, these activities seem unrelated and appear simply as things that

residents of Pulau Penyengat happen to enjoy in their free time. However, upon

further examination, these activities share several common features. The first is that

they (in their present form) were not initiated by villagers themselves as part of an

indigenous repertoire of pastimes. All of these activities were introduced at various

times by the state to induce citizens to spend their leisure time in particular ways that link to nation-building. These activities are intended to ‘improve’ the quality of the

average citizen for national purposes and are maintained by various levels of the state

through funding and other means.

The second commonality across these activities is that a high percentage and diverse range of citizens are encouraged to participate. High participation is important as it is the act of doing that makes the program a success and fulfills the state’s goal of changing the conduct of its citizens. To many citizens, leisure activities37 help to

make the ‘imagined community’ of the nation (Anderson 1991 [1983]) real, tangible

37 In this chapter I adopt Neulinger’s (1981) definition of leisure as describing a state of mind and something done voluntarily for pleasure. While people do an assortment of leisure activities including sleeping and work-oriented tasks, I focus only on structured play. I define play as something done in leisure time having clearly defined goals. ‘Structured play’ is intended to prevent other types of leisure activities. 227

and understandable in a way that is offered through consent rather than coercion, in contrast to the national performances examined in the workplace and in schools in the previous two chapters.

The management of leisure activities has been an important strategy of

Indonesia’s post-Independence nationalization process that has largely been neglected in scholarly work. A study of state-initiated leisure activities will shed light on another dimension of the nation-building process in Indonesia and to what extent the

Indonesian state has carried out programs at the village level in the context of Pulau

Penyengat. The concepts of performance and performativity are helpful ways in which to frame an examination of leisure activities, which, though they may be perceived as unstructured, are in fact highly regulated, requiring a set of scripted actions, a participating cast, and a particular ‘stage’ designed exclusively or temporarily transformed for that activity. Embodied performances in leisure activities also frequently play a crucial role in popularly representing and conveying national identity to a large and diverse group of citizens. Furthermore, the accessibility of leisure activities allows a wide range of people to enjoyably experience the ‘soft side’ of the state either as audience or performer.

In the previous two chapters, I explored performances of national identity in the realms of work and education on Pulau Penyengat. In the workplace and in educational contexts, performances were intended to produce conformity and consistency among the performers according to the state’s national choreography. For the performers, the main objective is not to stand out but to blend in. While conformity to and mastery over a repertoire of specialized actions in leisure activities are necessary, there is also the expectation that these activities serve the pragmatic 228

role as a training ground to scout for potential stars that stand out among their peers and who will bring prestige to the nation.

This chapter broadly seeks to investigate how the Indonesian state has extended its agenda of nationalization to the leisure time of its populace. Looking at the context of Pulau Penyengat, I examine the everyday leisure activities and infrastructure maintained by the state which encourage citizens to use their free time in ‘productive’ and ‘appropriate’ ways that support national goals. In the sections that follow, I look specifically at sport and dance as two key areas which bring the body at play and the nation together. They are also areas in which residents of Pulau

Penyengat have been, and continue to be, encouraged to actively perform a version of national identity through the use of state-funded and maintained recreational infrastructure.

This chapter begins with an overview of the leisure studies literature, examining how leisure has been used to improve the individual citizen and in nation- building. I then examine how sports and dance are linked with nationalism, and how scholars of Indonesia have approached leisure. I examine how certain leisure activities were linked to the rise of nationalism before a brief overview of recreation during the

Japanese Occupation on Pulau Penyengat and in Indonesia more broadly.

Next, I focus on four leisure activities introduced by the state on Pulau

Penyengat: volleyball, takro, Gerak Jalan [marching competitions], and dance. I examine how the Old and New Orders used recreation for national purposes and to what effect, while linking changing national ideology and developments in Jakarta to the remote village context of Pulau Penyengat. I pay particular attention to the wave of developments in the post-Kepri era and how leisure activities are once again being employed to encourage performances that reflect a national ideological shift. 229

Finally, I turn to how the population has responded to these programs. While

sports and performing arts programs are just as much a part of official notions of

national identity as the more formally regulated performances seen in Chapters Five

and Six, they are understood by villagers as being more voluntary and enjoyable than

those in the realms of work and education and are therefore challenged in rather

different ways. In the context of sports and dance on Pulau Penyengat, it is more

relevant to examine how villagers reinterpret and ignore official activities rather than

framing the analysis in terms of resistance. Throughout each chronological section, I

examine the people who are targets of recreational programs as well as the particular

activities that have, over a host of other possibilities, been selected for development by the state.

By focusing on the leisure activities introduced by the state rather than on indigenous or popular leisure activities, I do not wish to suggest that it is only through state-initiated activities that national identity is understood and performed. Several scholars of Indonesia have pointed out various leisure activities that have emerged from popular culture to take on national meaning. For example, Jeremy Wallach

(2008) has examined dangdut music as a popular pastime that has become a grassroots symbol of national identity. In this chapter, however, I focus only on activities that reach villagers in Pulau Penyengat through state programs and are recognized as ‘national’ by the villagers themselves.

7.2 Leisure and population improvement

After many calls over the past two decades to bring scholarly attention to

leisure (Hargreaves 1986; Bale 1993; Brownell 1995; Bale 1996; Rojek 1999;

Brownfoot 2000; Bale and Cronin 2003; Bale and Vertinsky 2004; Rojek 2005), there

is now a burgeoning literature that examines a range of leisure activities from a 230

variety of disciplinary perspectives. In A History of Leisure Studies, Peter Borsay

(2006: 1-2) roughly delineates the various categories of experience through which we

live our lives as work, education, religion, civil life (which includes politics and

voluntary work), and ordinary life. He then defines leisure as ‘what is left once these

categories have been removed’. Up until the 1960s and 70s, leisure studies tended to

take a ‘sunny view of leisure as a melange of personally life-affirming, wholesome

relations that expand social harmony and order’ (Rojek 2005: 12). In more recent

decades, leisure theorists have explored more critical questions of domination,

oppression and manipulation in leisure forms and practice. Scholars of leisure are now

interested in understanding ‘how we are variously positioned in leisure forms and

practices and how power relations permeate our motivation and experience of leisure’

(Rojek 2005: 12).

Much of the work in leisure studies has been carried out by cultural studies scholars (Shaw 1994; Grossberg 1997; Morley 1998), historians (Bailey 1978; Burke

1995; Huggins 2000; Borsay 2006), sociologists (Jarvie and Maguire 1994; Rojek

1999, 2005) and anthropologists (Giamatti 1989; Dyck 2000; Springwood 2000), yet this body of scholarship is inherently geographical in that it prioritizes the place and context of these activities and offers an embodied way of understanding identity and social interactions. Recent work in cultural geography speaks to the leisure studies literature, although it does not explicitly make this connection. In David Matless’s

Landscape and Englishness (1998), for example, he writes in detail about the emergence of leisure activities such as hiking and dancing, how they are linked to place and identity and how the state attempted to shape its citizenry through creating or designating particular places in which the populace was ideally intended to engage in appropriate leisure activities. The geographical literature on sports has contributed 231

an understanding of how sport is linked to place, location and landscape. In his

extensive writing on sports geography, John Bale and others (Bale 1989, 1993; Bale

and Moen 1995; Bale 1996; Bale and Sang 1996; Bale and Cronin 2003; Bale and

Vertinsky 2004) consider variations in sports across regional and national borders and

ways in which sports have influenced the cultural landscape. However, the general omission of sports and leisure from the geographical literature, is ‘peculiar and paradoxical because geography, like sports, involves the analysis of space and place’

(Bale, 1993: 5). While the imbalance has begun to be addressed in recent decades, it has frequently been noted that there is a strong western bias in the literature with

‘information on the other continents … at best fragmentary, often collected in wide- ranging surveys’ (Van Bottenburg 2001: 13; Brown 2006). Furthermore, the geographical literature on sport lacks a depth of critical analysis in its tendency to take a ‘Carl Sauer’ approach by focusing on categorizing sports and their location patterns.

Sports geography has generally focused on the historical and geographical roots of

modern sport, the growth and globalization of sports, and the physical location of sports (Bale 1978, 1982, 1986; Brailsford 1987; Bale 1989, 1993; Bale and Moen

1995; Bale and Sang 1996; Bale 2003; Bale and Vertinsky 2004). Literature in recent

years has begun to address the more cultural aspects of sports, treating sports as an

aspect of cultural life akin to film, music, cinema, and so on (Bale and Cronin 2003).

As Morris (2004: xv) observes, ‘the late nineteenth and early twentieth

centuries defined a period when the “problem” of the body and the “problem” of

nationalism came together in complex and interesting ways.’ Leisure activities have

the unique capacity to simultaneously change the bodies and minds of individuals and

to effectively bind people as a nation. For the purposes of my thesis, I am interested in 232

how leisure activities on Pulau Penyengat have been used by the ruling elite for the

two inextricably linked purposes of improving the individual and nation-building.

7.2.1 Improving the individual through play Leisure activities have long been seen as an opportunity to ‘improve’ the

quality of citizens’ bodies and conduct for national purposes, including improving

morals, cultivating discipline, redirecting aggression, and building physical strength.

Scholars from a range of backgrounds have examined bodily improvement in various

empirical contexts, most frequently Europe (Krüger 1987; Kershaw 1998; Mangan

1999, 2000; Gori 2004), the USSR (Makoveeva 2002), China (Morris, 2004), and colonial Asia (Brownell 1995; MacDonald 1999; Brownfoot 2000; Mills and Sen

2004). In many of these contexts, scholars have examined how bodily improvement was believed to most effectively occur through fitness and sport, and to a lesser extent, through dance. The Soviet philosophy viewed ‘the development of sports as a way of overcoming human imperfection’ (Makoveeva 2002: 9). In the context of

Victorian England, Bailey (1978) writes that ‘improved’ bodies toughened people up against the debilities of city life, maintained a readiness for armed service, and taught self-discipline in teamwork. Nazi Germany is an illustrative example of the belief that the individual’s body and the state were closely linked and advocated rigorous physical training in schools:

the folkish state must not adjust its entire educational work primarily to the inoculation of mere knowledge, but to the breeding of absolutely healthy bodies. The training of mental abilities is only secondary. And here again, first place must be taken by the development of character, especially the promotion of willpower and determination, combined with the training of joy in responsibility, and only in last place comes scientific schooling. (Hitler 1961: 408)

Furthermore, there was the underlying notion in Nazi philosophy that physical education and sport were not simply performed by the individual for individual fun, 233

relaxation or prestige, but rather as a national duty in the service of the nation-state.

(Krüger 1987: 8)

As body improvement is the target of many state-initiated leisure activities, the

body has also been a particular focus in the area of postcolonial discourse and analysis. In The Rhetoric of Empire David Spurr (1993: 22) emphasizes how ‘the body of the primitive’ was an important way by which the colonized were represented and argues that ‘the body, rather than speech, law or history, is the essential defining characteristic of primitive people’. Others point out that colonial travel writers were aware of the bodies of the colonized and that ‘physique was a particularly important theme in the European construction of the athleticism of various groups of people in the colonized world’ (Bale and Cronin 2003: 2).

Not only can bodies be improved through play, but conduct can also be

shaped. Sally Anderson (2003) examines how inner city children in Copenhagen

receive instruction about how to effectively strike the shuttlecock, but also in how to

comport themselves in an appropriate manner according to current Danish values and

ideals. In the context of the Soviet Union, Edelman (1993: 3) observes that ‘sports

events in the USSR had been organized with the official goal of instilling discipline,

order, and culture in the masses. Well-trained and obedient athletes were supposed to

serve as examples for those who watched’. According to the Victorian view, there

was a link between morality and physical virtues. Sports were seen as a means of

‘character formation, of training captains of industry and empire in such character

traits as loyalty, self-discipline, competitiveness and leadership ensconced in an

unwritten code of sporting ethics’ (Riordan 1991: 10). During Victorian times,

English boarding schools such as Harrow and Eton ‘considered playing a rough game

with strict rules a way to teach discipline and endurance’ (Colombijn 2000: 174). 234

Similarly, Edwin Dingle, writing in England in 1908, argued the benefits sport offered in shaping one’s character (Motor Car and Athletic Journal, March 1908, p. 5. Cited in Brownfoot 2000: 131):

It is generally conceded that nothing has a more beneficial or permanent effect in the formation of character than participation in health giving sports. … The youth is taught self-reliance and self-restraint, alertness and quickness of decision, the spirit of healthy rivalry and the more generous instincts of a true sportsman, ready to admit defeat from a better man.

Similarly, a British missionary in Kenya wrote that:

a game of football in the afternoon was played for moral benefit as much as recreational relief … to stiffen the backbone of these boys by teaching them manliness, good temper and unselfishness – qualities amongst others that have done much to make them a Britisher’ (Bale and Sang 1996: 77).

Altering the body through fitness became a key strategy by both state and empire for transforming the ‘lazy’, ‘undisciplined’ subjects with local loyalties into strong, disciplined citizens with a single, common purpose (Alatas 1977).

7.2.2 Nation-building through sports Leisure activities have long been considered to be more than pleasure-bringing

pastimes and have been recognized by ruling elites as an effective tool for binding

people and redirecting loyalties. In Victorian England physical recreation was

endowed with ‘a battery of serious purposes … thought essential for the continued

success of the Anglo-Saxon civilisation’ (Tranter 1998: 2). Alan Guttmann (1994: 5)

quotes a headmaster of Harrow School from 1881-1895 as saying that ‘it is written

that England has owed her sovereignty to her sports.’ Leisure and recreation are seen

as important ways in which to reach the ‘masses’ in a way that engages them

physically, that allows them to participate or perform their citizenship to the nation.

As Tarling (2001: 288) argues, ‘tied to the nationalist cause, and indeed to

‘development’, was a sense of popular participation.’ Brownfoot usefully highlights 235

the multiple scales at which sports operate through her study of the British in Malaya.

Sport was seen as a crucial tool with which to bind the British living in Malaya

together and was ultimately ‘advantageous to the individual, the group, the wider

community and the Empire’ (Brownfoot 2002: 131).

After gaining independence, many former colonies saw the political potential

in sports. A successful national team encourages citizens, who would otherwise have

few opportunities for participation in national politics, to identify with the nation

(Houlihan 1997; Colombijn 2000). For example, Castro realized the political potential

of sports when he heralded Cuba’s Olympic success as ‘a sporting, psychological,

patriotic and revolutionary victory’ (Fidel Castro, El Deporte 3 1976 p. 1, cited in

Riordan 1992: 7). As part of the strategy to transform and modernize the population, the leaders of Indonesia, like many former colonies, turned to sports immediately after

Independence (Bale and Cronin 2003).

Many Marxist historians share the belief that modern sports emerged during the industrial revolution as a way to mould people into better workers. This argument follows that sport was introduced to the working class to raise the productivity of the workforce as sport emphasized ‘special motor skills, competition and leisure’

(Rigauer 2000: 34). Others contend that sports have a depoliticizing effect on society, inducing political apathy and reproducing culture in a way that supports the needs of

capitalism (Althusser 1971). Brohm (1978) argues that sport and recreation practices are part of a structure in which the dominance of the elite is secured and reproduced.

According to this argument, political inclinations are replaced with passion for

supporting sports teams, thus serving to depoliticize the workforce.

On the other hand, in Alan Guttmann’s book Games and Empires (1994)

which examines how sport was intertwined with imperial strategies, he demonstrates a 236

great deal of evidence that links modern sports to political movements. For example,

he points to various nationalist and politically-motivated gymnastic clubs in 19th

France and Germany whose philosophies of exercise stemmed in part from a preparedness for action and a desire to avoid military defeat. In fact, one gymnast club was perceived as such a legitimate political threat that it was banned by the Prussian

Empire. As Morris (2004) points out, there are striking parallels between fitness regimes in a broad spectrum of state regimes: ‘Body discipline of various kinds … is integral to imperialism and to the way in which various kinds of nationalism developed in the postcolonial world’ (Morris 2004: xv).

In the case of Indonesia, the development of modern sports associations was key in both the local struggle for independence and the Republican nationalists’ strategy for securing legitimacy, international support, and respect. Indonesia’s leisure and recreation philosophy reflects broader international trends. While Indonesia’s use of sport in nation-building parallels that of other former colonies, Indonesia has had a unique combination of foreign influences whose presence continued to be felt during a time when Indonesia was deeply engaged with building a national identity.

Proponents of sports studies argue that it is through sports that bodies are frequently linked to power structures (Brownell 1995; Sands 1999; Morris 2004;

Hargreaves and Vertinsky 2007). This is particularly the case in postcolonial countries, where sport is a legacy of colonialism. Many countries, including

Indonesia, owe many of their present-day sporting traditions to colonists who brought modern sports to the colonies, often initially as a form of social control both for indigenous populations and colonizers. As Bale and Cronin (2003: 5) point out, sport was ‘part of the “civilizing” mission of imperialism, and thus an essential part of the colonial experiment.’ 237

Sport is a key part of Indonesian national culture yet has garnered very little attention to date from social scientists. Considering the importance of sport in

Indonesian society in terms of the number of participants in all levels of sports, the vast numbers of spectators, the state commitment, and the amounts of money involved, the paucity of studies which examine sport is striking. Furthermore, most histories of Indonesia hardly mention sports activities, despite the fact that this is an area rife with class tensions and racial assumptions, and actively involves the bodies of the citizenry in their everyday lives. There have only been three recent accounts published in English about sport in Indonesia38. The first is Freek Colombijn’s (2000) paper on ‘The Politics of Indonesian Football’, the only paper to date that explores the development of Indonesian football over the past century. In examining football, he observes continuity across the colonial period, the Old Order, and the New Order in how all sides have politicized football by using it as an instrument for political goals.

Colombijn points out that the study of sports is crucial to understanding nationalism in Indonesia and that further research is needed in this area. The second is Iain

Adams’s (2003) descriptive essay in the edited collection Sport in Asian Society: Past and Present called ‘Pancasila: Sport and the Building of Indonesia – Ambitions and

Obstacles’ in which he provides a broad overview of the development of sport in

Indonesia. His decision to examine sport through the lens of Pancasila is ultimately unsuccessful as the two are not convincingly connected in any meaningful way. While

Adams correctly argues that sport has been an integral aspect of Indonesian nation- building, structuring his argument through Pancasila proves too limiting and does not help us to better understand the interplay between politics, nation-building and

38 Two earlier studies by Pauker (1965) and Sie (1978) focused on the formation of GANEFO (Games of the New Emerging Forces). GANEFO, consisting of only ‘emerging nations,’ was established in Indonesia in 1962 as a counter to the Olympics. Unlike the Olympic Games, GANEFO was overtly political and included primarily socialist states. 238

Indonesian sport. The third is Colin Brown’s (2006) paper ‘Playing the Game:

Ethnicity and Politics in Indonesian Badminton’ in which he provides a descriptive,

historical account of the development of Indonesian badminton and how racial

politics with Chinese Indonesian have been played out in the context of badminton.

These scholars argue that much more attention still needs to be paid to sports in

Indonesia as its national history can effectively be told through the development of its

sports. This can be seen in the many international influences on Indonesian sport,

which is linked to leisure and fitness philosophies from Europe, Japan, and the

Communist world.

7.2.3 Dance and national identity Over the last decade, dance has also been explored as an activity in which

national identity is performed in various contexts including South America

(Savigliana 1995; Archetti 1999), Britain (Matless 1998; Foley 2001), Asia

(Hitchcock 1998; Talamantes 2006; Cohen 2007; Cohen, Royo, and Noszlopy 2007), native American communities (Axtmann 2001), and in immigrant communities

(Goldstein 1998).

Indonesia has been the subject of several recent articles which examine how

dance and national identity are intertwined. As the state has striven to modernize,

develop and unite a diverse population, dance has been a target of state policies of

‘folklorization’ and ‘exoticization’. ‘Folklorization’ refers to the relocation of

indigenous customs from their original settings to new contexts, usually under the

direct sponsorship of the state and ‘exoticization’ refers to the ‘selling’ of customs

either to a tourist market or its own populace (Urban and Sherzer 1991). At the same

time the Indonesian state has sought to homogenize national identity through its

national motto of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika [Unity in Diversity] (Picard and Wood 1990). 239

As Soedarsono (1968) writes, the national motto negated the individuality of

Indonesian cultures in a way that affected traditional dance. The state sought to

‘dispose of its old-fashioned characteristic,’ shifting dance from traditional sites of temples and palaces to secular public spaces (Talamantes 2006: 366). As a result of these changes, tensions have emerged between the locals and the state that have been explored in several recent papers.

Talamantes (2006) examines how local dance in Bali can serve to contest national policies on dance and circumvent the state’s efforts to establish a pan-

Indonesian identity. With the rise of cultural tourism in Bali, the government and ruling elite adopted policies that both protected and marketed dance in Bali in an effort to gain control over the production of dance. As a result, dance has been institutionalized, codified, and standardized in a way that was more in response to a

‘pan-Indonesian stride toward modernization and development rather than to local cultural and religious requirements’ (Talamantes 2006: 365). However, certain dances have remained intertwined with religious practices and dancers have borrowed and modified outside (state) influences without breaking allegiance to ancestral traditions.

Despite sharing some similarities with sport, dance and sport have seldom been brought together in academic study. The most significant contribution to bring sport and dance together has been made by the social anthropologists, Noel Dyck and

Eduardo Archetti. In their edited collection, Sport, Dance and Embodied Identities

(2003), they treat sport and dance as ‘ethnographically distinctive but analytically commensurable forms of body culture and social practice’ (Dyck and Archetti 2003:

1). While they observe that sport and dance have conventionally been viewed in the

West as residing within separate and even opposed cultural realms, they point out that both are ‘techniques of the body’ (Mauss 1973) and have a vital capacity to ‘express 240

and reformulate identities and meanings through their practised movements and

scripted forms’ (Dyck and Archetti 2003: 1). Both sport and dance can arouse

widespread participation and varied interpretations by performers and their audience.

Furthermore, they are not merely entertainment and recreation but are powerful tools

for ‘celebrating existing social arrangements and cultural ideals or for imagining and

advocating new ones’ (Dyck and Archetti 2003: 1).

7.3 The Development of leisure in the Indies

7.3.1 Pre-rationalized leisure ‘…it may be wise not to take as a whole the rationalization of society or of culture, but to analyse such a process in several fields, each with reference to a fundamental experience’ (Foucault 1982).

The story of the rationalization of leisure begins in Europe, where industrialization brought about a shift in many areas of culture including leisure activities that was characterized by modernization and rationalization (Bale 1993).

Some scholars contend that the very concept of leisure emerged out of the particular conditions of industrialization, giving rise to the distinct spheres of work and leisure.

John Clarke and Chas Critcher (1985: 85) observe that the concept of leisure cannot be separated from work:

looking overall at the trends evident by the 1840s, the clearest impression is of the wholesale changes in the rhythms and sites of work and leisure enforced by the industrial revolution. It was during this period that what we have come to see as a discrete area of human activity called “leisure” became recognizable.

Others believe that the rupture created by industrialization has been overstated in the transformation of leisure time. Peter Borsay (2006: 9; see also Burke 1995) rejects the

hypothesis that there is a fundamental discontinuity between pre-industrial and

industrial society in Europe: 241

Though transformations of a radical nature in the form and character of leisure have occurred, there are also underlying continuities … which make it permissible to examine the same category of experience in 2000 as in 1500.

While not to deny a greater rationalization of society, Borsay (2006) takes the approach that there are shared qualities in leisure activities such as music, games, festivals, and so on that reveal a frame of mind similar to today. While leisure may be able to be understood as a category prior to the industrial revolution in Europe, it is

widely accepted that the fundamental nature of leisure activities greatly changed

during this time. Many aspects of life grew increasingly rationalized and there was a

‘general sportization of pastimes’ (Elias 1982). Bale (1993: 13) writes about this shift in the context of football in Europe:

...football in medieval and pre-modern Europe was much more a form of play and carnival than of seriousness and sport. Its fun-like character was reflected in the landscapes in which it was played. No specialized sites existed for football; it was played, not simply in places usually used for other activities, but also while other activities were going on. The sixteenth- and seventeenth- century marketplace and street, for example, were environments not simply for transportation and movement but also for a wide range of other activities, including play. Hogarth’s Night showed the street as an untidy place, work and play being spatially intertwined. The street was a meeting place and a market place, a place for refuse and for refuge, a place for washing and eating; it was also a place for entertainment and playing, with street football being one of the things that was played.

Similar observations are made by Brown (2006) in his discussion about the development of badminton in Indonesia. Badminton in the 19th century, he argues,

was ‘as much about entertainment as about physical exercise or participation’ and

pasar malam [night market] would stage tournaments (Brown 2006: 74). As Brown

(2006) points out, badminton was played in the 19th century in the carnivalesque

environment of the night market, indicating that at that time, the sport was present but

not yet rationalized. Bale (1993:15) observes that

during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries society at large experienced a growing rationalization and geographic confinement, such space- consciousness accompanying a growing time-consciousness among the 242

population, associated with the rise of capitalism. An increasing division of labour was accompanied by an increasing division of space and time. There was a time for work and a time for play; there were also to be specific places where various activities, previously found in streets and on commons, could now be undertaken in the emerging “carceral city”.

While a range of leisure activities existed in Indonesia prior to the Dutch colonial occupation, they were not organized by the leadership but by individuals.

Traditional leisure could be described as ‘localised in its geographic range, irregular in its availability and timing and largely devoid of institutional structures and commonly accepted written rules’ (Tranter 1998: 1). Activities in this era were highly localized, styles and rules varied from place to place and the venues for activities had many other purposes, in contrast to rationalized leisure examined in the next section.

In the Malay world, including the Riau Islands, many pastimes required craft skills and manual dexterity, such as kite flying, top spinning, races on bamboo stilts and takro (Brownfoot 2000). While nothing has been written specifically on the leisure activities of Pulau Penyengat or of Riau, the above activities were popular with the common folk, in addition to music and dance, as evidenced by the stories of old timers on the island. Due to the close relationship to the sea, villagers in Penyengat have also traditionally engaged in fishing and boat racing in their free time

(Colombijn 2000). ‘Blood sports’ such as cock fighting were common as well as other forms of gambling (Adams 2003). In the colonial and pre-colonial eras, the elite of

Pulau Penyengat, as with Malays in other parts of the Malay world, were highly literate and enjoyed writing poetry in their free time (Putten 2002, 2006).

7.3.2 Leisure and the nationalist movement Many Dutch leisure activities gained favour with Indonesians as they gained exposure to Dutch culture (Mrázek 1997). Youths attended dances, Dutch fashion was widely adopted in urban areas, and many began to play Dutch-introduced sports such 243

as football, swimming and badminton (Mrázek 1997; Colombijn 2000). Not

surprisingly, this emulation of Dutch culture became highly politicized by the

colonized and roused the passions of nationalists of all stripes. Many felt the Dutch

were corrupting the youth and luring them into forgetting their own culture (Nordholt

1997b). Long before independence, leisure activities frequently play a role in emerging nationalism (Tuastad 1997). In recent years, scholars of Indonesia have examined the relationship between leisure and the nationalist movement through such

activities as sports (Colombijn 2000; Adams 2003; Brown 2006), theatre (Asmara

1995; Bodden 1997; Hellman 2003; Bodden 2007), music (Yampolsky 1989;

Simatupang 1996; Wallach 2002),television and media (Kitley 1997, 2000; Sen and

Hill 2000), wayang kulit (Hatley 1982; Nagy 2006), clothes (Nordholt 1997b; Siegel

1997; Mrázek 2002) and theme parks (Pemberton 1994; Siegel 1997; Errington 1998;

Hitchcock 1998).

During the struggle for Indonesian Independence and in the following years,

there was a strong link between nationalist activities and sport. Sports were an

important part of the nationalist movement starting from the 1920s when the creation

of sports facilities and programs were prioritized by young nationalist groups. Sports

became a way to express identity, to perform, and to instil key values and ideology in

the bodies of supporters, and the decades before WWII saw a dramatic increase in the

proportion of the (male) population seeking out organized sports, particularly football.

As the nationalist movement was driven primarily by youth, many nationalists took

advantage of the popularity of many recreational activities by targeting youths and

sought ways to influence them (Adams 2003). One of these ways was through the

creation of sports clubs that emerged as centers of resistance to colonial rule, carrying

out nationalist activities and inculcating members with concepts of nationalism and 244

independence. Adams (2003: 297) argues that ‘in some ways the independence and nationalistic fervour of Indonesian youth was kindled through sport’. To many nationalists, engaging in nationalized sport was seen as a political act since participation rejected colonial racial and class hierarchies. While sports in

(post)colonial contexts are frequently discussed as hegemonic, this view does not fully recognize the complex range of ways in which sports have been used locally by nationalists.

In 1930 seven teams of indigenous football players formed a national association, Persatuan Sepakbola Seluruh Indonesia (PSSI), ‘All Indonesia Football

Federation.’ The Malay name indicated an exclusively indigenous membership and the use of ‘Indonesia’ rather than ‘Hindia Belanda’, or the ‘Dutch East Indies’, the

Dutch colonial name for the archipelago, betrayed nationalist sympathies (Colombijn

2000). While this association was limited to Java and had no interaction with other areas of the Indies, the fact that PSSI took ‘the boundaries of the colony as the potential limits of the football federation, must have had a role in imagining the nation as a community’ (Anderson 1991 [1983]; Houlihan 1997; Colombijn 2006: 183).

Youth groups in Palembang used football clubs as camouflage for political activities

(106, cited in Zed 1991; Colombijn 2000: 183) , making ‘the dividing line between the moderate nationalism movement playing football and a football association supporting nationalism … blurred’ (Adams 2003).

While not all nationalist groups in Indonesia placed emphasis on sports in their attempts to construct a nation, the Republican leaders in independent Indonesia shared a deep faith in modernity and progress that guided policy. They borrowed heavily from colonial understandings of human progress. Indonesian national development started with the Dutch-derived assumption that the Indonesian populace was 245

incomplete and required the intervention of external forces to produce the conditions for both material and social advancement (Du Bois 1991). The effect of Dutch colonialism has been built into the notions of race, progress, modernity and development as hierarchies (Pieterse and Parekh 1995).

7.3.3 Recreation under the Japanese occupation Very little has been written to date about how the Japanese treated leisure activities during their occupation. Colombijn (2000) points out that for European men in the Indies interned by the Japanese during the war, sports were a key tool of survival and had an important effect on their identities. Since many Europeans had lived in the Indies for generations, many felt only marginally connected with their own homelands. During the Second World War, serious international football matches were played in Japanese prisoner of war camps between the Scottish, English and

Dutch (Colombijn 2000). These matches divided the Europeans along national lines, serving to redirect their emotions towards motherlands and away from colonial identities and allegiances. The sports activities Indonesians had organized in the decades before the war were seen as a threat to Japanese power and all sporting clubs were quickly shut down (Colombijn 2000). In their place, the Japanese established the

‘Tai Iku Kai’, a ‘general sports organization for martial arts and other semi-military exercises’ (Colombijn 2000: 184). The Japanese also initially maintained the Dutch ban on pencak silat, the martial art found around the region, which they also perceived as a threat. However, in an attempt to win over the local population, the

Japanese later lifted the ban and set out to reintroduce pencak silat in a way that allowed them to more effectively control it through standardization (Maryono 2002).

The Japanese rationalized pencak silat on a massive scale, taking a martial art that varied in style from region to region and standardizing it for the first time, even 246

publishing and widely distributing the first ever manual on pencak silat moves

(Maryono 2002).

7.4 Post-Independence leisure: ‘Completely new Indonesians’ We want to create a completely new Indonesian nation, completely new Indonesian people, completely new Indonesians. Even physically they are completely new. Yes, physically new. I remember having said in one of my speeches in Solo in 1956: How wonderful it would be if we could create a completely new Indonesian person! … Our revolution … is not only a national revolution, but … is even a revolution to create new human beings. --Address by President Sukarno to the Indonesian Women’s Congress (Jakarta, 6 February 1961, #270A)

This section examines how the state attempted to shape the bodies and

behaviour of its citizenry through several leisure activities in the post-Independence

era: volleyball, takro, Gerak Jalan [marching competitions] and dance. First, however, I provide a brief history of how post-Independence governments linked leisure and nation-building.

Immediately after Independence was proclaimed in 1945, the new national leadership felt Indonesia had to rapidly change and modernize in order to reach national goals. As discussed in previous chapters, the Republican leaders were deeply invested in the moral priorities of the Dutch and Japanese. They inherited many of the racist colonial assumptions that Indonesian people’s supposed laziness, lack of

discipline and other character deficiencies made the population itself an obstacle to

national development and nation-building (Alatas 1977). The Old Order leaders

concentrated on broadly addressing these deficiencies at the workplace and in schools.

They also introduced rationalized sports into the lives of its populace in an effort to

carry out the agenda of modernization in citizens’ leisure time.

According to Alan Guttmann’s Marxist analysis, it was in the ruling elite’s

best interests to have a workforce that was ‘physically healthy, manually dextrous, 247

submissive to the temporal and spatial requirements of assembly-line work, and politically docile’ (Guttmann 2000: 255). In other words, altering the bodies and the behaviour of the population was inseparable from visions of modernity and industrialism. This can be seen in Indonesia where, influenced by Soviet Marxist philosophy, early Republican leaders very much saw industrial advancement as the ideal path for Indonesia to take. Sports were one way in which the bodies of the working class were increasingly targeted for improvement in a variety of cultural contexts in the industrial era. Improving the workforce through sport was believed to be effective as

the muscular exertion and skills associated with sports participation are alleged to contribute to the workers’ health and manual dexterity; the need to accept the rules of the game socializes factory hands to routinized work; and the entertainment afforded by sports spectacles diverts the exploited workforce from political action. Modern sports are, therefore, an instrument to preserve the class structure of capitalist society. (Guttmann 2000: 255)

The value of sports propaganda in supporting nation-building and in conferring legitimacy in the eyes of the international community was quickly realized in Indonesia. Sports were seen as possessing a unifying power that could focus the population’s loyalty towards Jakarta. Sports were also something nearly anyone could take part in and Sukarno, influenced by Soviet notions of gender equality (Jancar-

Webster 1978; Pascall and Manning 2000), encouraged all citizens equally to participate (Presidential address, 1953, #0143). Furthermore, the fact that the most advanced and powerful states also had the most advanced sporting culture was not lost on early nationalists. In 1947, while the Dutch were attempting to reclaim the

Indies, the Sukarno government founded the Olympic Committee and the Persatuan

Olahraga Republik Indonesia (PORI), the ‘Federation of Sports in the Republic of

Indonesia’ inaugurated by Sukarno himself and intended as the ‘sole vehicle for

national sporting activities’ (Brown 2006: 78). Athletes were soon sent abroad to 248

participate in international sporting events. Indonesian officials were sent along with

the athletes in order to learn about staging them.

Sukarno managed to secure the 1962 Fourth Asian Games for Indonesia, to be

hosted in Jakarta. He embarked on a grandiose building programme, ordering the

construction of a national sporting complex which included a new football and

athletic stadium, called Senayan, with a capacity of 100,000 spectators, smaller

stadiums for other sports, the first-class Hotel Indonesia, and the Welcome Monument

(Leclerc 1993). Senayan became the icon of the Old Order and satellite smaller stadiums were built in provincial capitals across the country to engage the wider populace in sports. At this time, national sports organizations were set up and sports infrastructure was created with the idea that young athletes would have the chance to develop their talents and the most talented of each province would ultimately form the national team.

Throughout his leadership, Sukarno looked to the communist world for guidance, even declaring the Jakarta-Beijing axis in his presidential address on

Independence Day in 1965. The Soviet Union and Mao’s China placed emphasis on sport as a way to fulfill national goals. Mao’s slogan of ‘New Physical Culture’ was echoed in Old Order policies that emphasized a break with tradition and implied modernity and development. He followed the communist ‘sports for all’ philosophy in part to quickly ‘improve’ the citizenry but also to set up a system by which widespread sports programs could produce and spot gifted athletes that could represent Indonesia internationally (Azis and Laksmi 2006). This involved a massive effort to introduce the country to European sports they had never seen before and spark a sense of national pride39. The effort also sought to involve the citizenry in

39 Sukarno’s government distributed tens of thousands of televisions across the country to ensure an audience for the Asian Games. Pulau Penyengat received its first television at this time, a communal set run by the village head. 249

some form of exercise and recreation. It was part of a plan-filled system: every

school, workplace, city, region, village, kelurahan, and so on, were expected to reach

quotas of participants in sports and were to incur penalties if they fell short (Azis and

Laksmi 2006). Ironically, with the expulsion of the Dutch came adoption of European sports in villages across Indonesia.

In practice, the Sukarno plan was less successful than hoped for during the Old

Order (Azis and Laksmi 2006). Politically, it was a turbulent time and economically

Indonesia was in extremely dire straits. Indonesians suffered from starvation and malnutrition and lacked basic needs such as clothes and medicine. Many residents of

Pulau Penyengat were given regular rations of rice during these years. Despite the massive state efforts to create sports infrastructure and to encourage the citizenry to participate in sports programs, sports were a low priority.

7.4.1 Volleyball and other ‘modern’ national sports The massive push towards developing sports facilities in Jakarta after

Independence was felt in towns and villages across the country. Spatially, the sporting culture took the form of facilities concentrated in provincial capitals. A modern sports complex was constructed in all provincial capitals at this time (Azis and Laksmi

2006), including Tanjung Pinang. In Pulau Penyengat, sports infrastructure was constructed all over the island, including badminton courts (Figure 7.1), volleyball courts, and a sepak bola [football] field (Figure 7.2).

Participation in state sports programs on Pulau Penyengat has been uneven.

Volleyball is the long-time favourite sport to play on Pulau Penyengat. Villagers have enthusiastically put together volleyball teams made up of friends and family members and there are tournaments organized by the state between kelurahans in the Riau

Islands. Football, on the other hand, has not been adopted and is only played on 250

Independence Day in an event organized by the state. While football is easily the most popular sport in Indonesia, Pulau Penyengat residents offer various rationalizations as

to why it has not become popular on the island. Similarly, badminton is only

sporadically played in Pulau Penyengat, with the high cost of equipment cited as the reason. This variation in participation demonstrates how residents on Pulau Penyengat are free to choose what to participate in. While the state may build facilities for

activities, it is no guarantee that the people will engage in them as the state intends.

In what follows, I turn to the responses participants have provided about

national sports programs. One volleyball player, a primary school-educated housewife

in her early 40s, commends the efforts of the state to encourage such leisure activities

and employs the state’s own terminology when expressing herself:

It’s good we have these facilities … they are quite simple but adequate. … Sports make our bodies’ healthy and strong. … it is good for young people, it encourages discipline … it’s something to do that is positive … (Rini, 12 November, 2006)

Many villagers point out the potential for monetary gain and social prestige in state

sports programs. As mentioned earlier, one of the current members of the national

women’s volleyball team is from Pulau Penyengat. She has successfully risen through

the national system that scouts out talented athletes from villages from across the

country and trains them at institutes in Jakarta. Since volleyball has yielded tangible

results in Pulau Penyengat, it is treated as a possible (if remote) career choice and

some parents encourage their children to join. While this has made the connection

between volleyball and economics explicit in Pulau Penyengat, it also reinforces and

naturalizes the various levels of state bureaucracy while cementing the notion of the

nation as the most elite and lucrative level to which one should aspire.

251

Figure 7.1 - Neighbourhood badminton court with a measured court, referee chair, lighting

Figure 7.2 - Football field: overgrown and disused

As has been noted in earlier chapters, the New Order government has been

‘fond of promoting uniformity among its people and across the country’s landscape’

(Sekimoto 1997: 307). This was maintained by a fine-grained system of government bureaucracy which employed a massive number of people on many levels, down to unpaid positions at the village and neighbourhood level. This bureaucratic structure 252

and increased number of state workers enabled state plans to be carried out with a higher degree of uniformity and consistency than was possible during the Old Order.

While more grand national facilities were built in the Old Order (Azis and Laksmi

2006; Rangkuti and Nicholas LMS 2006), more fine-grained organization and activity

at the village level occurred in the New Order (Lutan 2005). A direct result of this

expansion of the bureaucracy was seen in a larger proportion of the village population

engaged in ‘modern’ national sports.

Despite the expansion of participants in leisure activities introduced by the

state, there are certain unstated restrictions for participation. While volleyball is

ostensibly accessible to all in the communist ‘sport for all’ philosophy, matches and

tournaments are scheduled around the standard office schedule rather than, say,

fishing patterns or other seasonal occupations as leisure activities traditionally would

have been. During the Old Order, many residents on Pulau Penyengat were

unemployed or worked as fishermen, coolies (in Tanjung Pinang), boat builders, or

other independent ventures. As the economy grew and as Indonesia became more

rationalized, a growing proportion of the population had jobs that followed an office

work day schedule. Leisure activities are now planned around the modern work

schedule, making some villagers uncomfortable about participating. One man in his

early 50s initially claimed he was too old to join state leisure activities. Over the

course of our conversation, however, other issues such as class and time emerged as

issues that prevented him from participating.

They all play volleyball in the evening … sometimes I am unloading a ship in the evening, sometimes catching prawns, depending on the tide. If you are a member of a team, you need to be there ... there are a lot of matches and you have to practice too … They also have to buy uniforms and sports gear. … No! The government doesn’t pay for them – the players pay themselves. Sometimes I watch with my grandchildren. … but I don’t play. (Pak Adit, 28 October, 2007)

253

As leisure activities have increasingly been rationalized, those not working in an office, in a school or in a commercial business are increasingly being excluded from state-organized leisure activities. Those with ‘modern’ occupations with modern, rationalized work/leisure rhythms are better able to participate. Thus, performing national identity becomes easier and more natural the more closely one is implicated in the national system. In this way, performing national identity in free time is an activity of the youth and of office workers.

7.4.2 Takro As examined in Chapter Six, takro was re-introduced to Pulau Penyengat in the 2000s as a component of the school curriculum and as part of a broader initiative in Indonesia to cultivate local culture. In this section I examine the recent

(re)introduction of an official state-initiated version of takro to Pulau Penyengat.

The sun is getting lower and more people are coming out of their houses to enjoy the afternoon. The square is bustling with spectators and the tea stalls are full of men playing dominoes. The square has recently been paved and now has a takro court painted on the ground, complete with a giant image of a takro ball in the centre of the court and a smaller circle on each side to indicate where the players serve from. There is a professional quality net, a raised white referee chair and six tall poles topped with a florescent light creating ‘stadium lighting’ for the court. Along one side of the court the grand old mosque towers over the square while on another is the performance stage, both painted deep yellow, the signature colour of Pulau Penyengat’s royal family. Pulau Penyengat’s all-male team is practicing in shiny blue uniforms that look like football jerseys, complete with individual numbers on the back. The players appear to be between in their late teens to late-20s and all are strong and fit. The team representing another kelurahan from Bintan will soon be arriving by pompong [motorized canoe-like boat that serves as the ferry to Pulau Penyengat].

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Figure 7.3 – Warming up for a takro match in the main square

... The opposing team is quite late and it is now dark out. The players have stopped practicing and now children and youths are playing around with takro balls on the court. The team finally arrives and both teams warm up. The court is brightly lit and is the brightest space on the island. Hundreds of spectators have crowded around the square to watch the match. Children sit on the pavement at the front of the crowd. The match begins and the show of athleticism is spectacular. Players lift their legs over their head to smash the ball over the net with their feet. The athletes are working hard and the crowd is mesmerized, clapping and cheering for every point and for exceptionally good kicks and saves. The match is over with a victory for the home team. For the next match, the team will travel to Batam, but the team there is weak so another victory is expected. I can hear some members of the audience analyzing Pulau Penyengat’s chances and how far they may climb in this tournament. [Field notes, 17 February, 2006]

Takro has generated great interest since its recent (re)introduction as a rationalized sport on Pulau Penyengat. It has sparked interest in younger boys to play, attracts many spectators, and the games are a source of excitement and pride for villagers, as is the professional-quality court. As described above, the most central, highly-visible and symbolic space on the island has been allocated to takro: the main 255

square next to the mosque and the performance stage. This sends a clear message to

islanders that takro is a state priority.

The takro recently introduced by the state is highly rationalized and bears little

resemblance to how takro was historically played. As mentioned, there are spaces designated exclusively for takro and all teams wear uniforms. Based on comments of

islanders, it is because of this rationalization that young men are now attracted to

takro. Where takro was once seen as something kampungan [boorish, low class], the

flashy uniforms that recall football jerseys, the official court, the elevated referee’s

chair, the stadium lighting, all look to be a part of the modern world they imagine and

wish to join.

I like wearing a uniform…it looks very tidy and handsome, doesn’t it? … and it makes us look like a real team, more professional … not just some village people. (takro player, 13 February, 2007)

Before, takro was just played by ayam kampung [literally village chickens, meaning kids who run around freely in the village] in a way that was informal. ... Takro is a Malay culture and these days it is modernizing without losing its roots in our traditions. ... see? Now takro has already become standardized... (Pak Sudirman, 17 February, 2006)

When asked why they thought takro has suddenly become popular again, players and

spectators made links with the past while emphasizing its new ‘modern’ appeal:

... because takro has modernized so teams can all play without arguing over the rules! (Yanto, 17 February, 2006)

Takro is played throughout Southeast Asia. This is an authentic Malay sport that ASEAN countries all play, not imported. (Haz, 17 February, 2006)

The courts and the lights are new. ... The uniforms are new... football is the number one sport in Indonesia – now takro looks more like football. The players look more tidy and modern (Ninik, 17 February, 2006)

Takro has modernized... little by little Indonesia is more modernized... even our hobbies become modernized! (Uji, 17 February, 2006)

Others were more cynical about the recent (re)introduction of takro to Pulau

Penyengat: 256

... this is like Taman Mini! Everything is decided in Jakarta: “Now we are going to make a monument in each village, and now we will make a stage in the village, and this year we teach dance so we have dancers for Taman Mini, and now we support takro”. No one played takro last year! The tradition here was gone – the children did not play it any more. ... Now it is very popular but only because the government introduced it... people will not think of these things on their own... (Sayid, 19 February, 2006)

Takro is cheap! All you need is a rattan ball! This way, the government does not need to pay very much money to provide a sports program! (Veronika, 19 February, 2006)

Figure 7.4 - Takro practice next to the mosque

Like the use of ethnic costumes, takro perpetuates gender norms, and it is clear that takro’s gendered qualities are normalized. When I asked who plays takro, one woman said that it was for men only and for women to watch because that was the tradition.

Desi: Women should not play takro – what would happen if a girl lifted her leg to kick the ball? She would show her underpants!

Sarah: But you are wearing shorts.

Desi: Yes, but in the old days, women wore sarongs.

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Sarah: So why can’t women who wear shorts today play takro? You are on a volleyball team, right?

Desi: But takro is more rough, it is for men … you kick and then you could fall down. (13 February, 2007)

While it is acceptable for women of all ages to don uniforms and play volleyball or participate in competition marching, takro is seen as masculine. In the case of takro, the (re)introduction of a traditional activity serves to gender villagers according to traditional norms (real or imagined) in a way that volleyball does not. The intentionally gendered aspect of takro reveals the state’s intention to have it perceived as authentic by villagers through preserving it as a traditionally male domain. In contrast to observations made by scholars who have pointed out that aspects of the nation such as history, culture and nostalgia are often positioned as ‘feminine’ while more progressive aspects of the nation such as technology and modernity are often positioned as ‘masculine’ (McClintock 1993; Radcliffe 1996; Sunindyo 1998), takro is positioned by the state as an expression of both indigenous and national masculinity.

While it is acceptable for women of all ages to don uniforms and play volleyball or participate in competition marching, takro is seen as masculine. In the case of takro, the (re)introduction of a traditional activity serves to gender villagers according to traditional norms (real or imagined) in a way that volleyball does not. The intentionally gendered aspect of takro reveals the state’s intention to have it perceived as authentic by villagers through preserving it as a traditionally male domain. In contrast to observations made by scholars who have pointed out that aspects of the nation such as history, culture and nostalgia are often positioned as ‘feminine’ while more progressive aspects of the nation such as technology and modernity are often positioned as ‘masculine’ (McClintock 1993; Radcliffe 1996; Sunindyo 1998), takro 258

is positioned by the state as an expression of both indigenous and national masculinity. Through enforcing the supposed masculinity of takro, the state is performatively reproducing traditional gender norms that are disrupted in volleyball.

The group, led by Sayed and Pak Deni, overlaps with the gotong-royong group mentioned in Chapter Five. Pak Deni, who is in his 40s, was a deckhand on container ships around the world and in the 1990s worked his way up to captain of a boat that made local trips between Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. He now works in a shipping office in Tanjung Pinang and was involved in helping out with the December

2007 mayoral election, campaigning for the opposition. He is well-respected, relatively well-off and known for his independent thinking and his willingness to support the underdog. Sayed had recently quit his job at a resort in Bali, where he gained exposure to a different process of cultural construction. While many Balinese would disagree, Sayed felt that the Balinese, in contrast to Pulau Penyengat residents, have effectively maintained their traditional culture and have been financially rewarded for doing so through tourism. He admired how Bali was not just a physical place but was a lived culture:

Bali is not just Balinese buildings and decorations and resorts in Balinese style … the Balinese often wear traditional clothes for festivals, they make offerings, they study dance … they still have some tradition in their lives. (Sayed, 7 February, 2006)

In his comments, Sayed draws an important distinction between active, performed identity and static symbolism. To him, it is the lived aspect of culture that is most valuable to encourage and most difficult to bring back in Pulau Penyengat. State cultural development in Pulau Penyengat has, according to Sayed, been conceived of in Jakarta by designers whose only experience with Riau islands culture is through

Taman Mini. 259

He and his group began to locally campaign in 2005-2006, before the state

established the official takro league, for locals to return to their roots and play

indigenous sports, particularly takro, in their leisure time. This was motivated in large

part by the growing sense that local identity and traditions have been rapidly lost in

recent years. The group was also motivated by the growing realization that the state at

the provincial and national level was about to get involved in Pulau Penyengat’s

affairs permanently to oversee its development as the cultural heartland of Kepri.

While Sayed is not critical of the state involvement in volleyball and football,

he feels the state, particularly officials from Jakarta, should not impose local culture

in any way and should only be involved marginally through providing financial

assistance. Sayed and others feel protective of takro as it is seen as part of their

cultural heritage, unlike volleyball and other international sports that are seen as

foreign.

Sayed: They have made a ‘Malay’ stage right next to the mosque…and now takro... it is disrespectful, it is not polite… there are always dance practices … they do not even stop for the call to prayer. They [the government] did not ask us where we wanted the stage. They just decided and put it where they liked… same with the Balai Adat40 … it’s just like Taman Mini!

Sarah: How is it like Taman Mini?

Sayed: It is not authentic. It is built by the government who thinks they know this culture … we did not build it ourselves … it’s not who we are. It’s for tourists, for government officials who come to Penyengat to look at. They paint it yellow41 and call it traditional. (13 Nov, 2005)

40 Balai Adat, or Traditional Hall, is a structure on the opposite side of Pulau Penyengat created in the late New Order during the beginning of move towards decentralization and ethnicization. It was originally built with the vague notion that the weddings on the island would occur there (they have not – islanders prefer to have weddings at home). It is symbolic of the time in many ways: it was built on the initiative of the state and designed in a style found in the Riau Province section of Taman Mini but not in the Riau Islands. It was also never finished and started to fall apart immediately since the contractor siphoned off money by using substandard materials and shoddy construction. In the post-Kepri era, it has been completely refurbished and a performance stage has been constructed next to it in anticipation of it becoming a second focal point after the square both for tourism and local cultural activities. (Pak Acay, 12 October, 2006) 41 Yellow is the signature color of the Sultan of Riau. Since 2004, all of the Sultan’s existing buildings have been painted yellow, including the historical mosque, as well as new buildings built to imitate the architecture favored by the sultan in the 19th century. 260

Implicit in this comment is the understanding that Taman Mini is an inauthentic state-created version of Indonesia in which a grand display of architecture is always coupled with a stage of dancers. Although he frames his argument as being about Muslim morality (i.e. playing takro as well as dancing next to those at prayer, as will be discussed in the following sub-section), Sayed could not be described by anyone, including himself, as a devout Muslim. The root of his discontent appears to be that national understandings of local culture imposed on Pulau Penyengat residents are infringing upon, and even making a mockery of, what he feels is local ‘truly authentic’ culture.

As it became clear that the state was becoming more involved with cultural development in Pulau Penyengat, Sayed and about six or eight others attempted to create a grassroots organization through which the state would have to communicate.

The organization was to be made up of villagers and would negotiate with the government about any state developments on the island on behalf of the villagers.

While this role should have been fulfilled by the kelurahan, the group felt that the kelurahan represented the state to the people rather than the other way around and was therefore ineffective for their purposes. This group consisted primarily of men who had travelled within the country and the region and represented a small number of residents. They were all interested in stories of success and failure about other communities and spoke at length about Pulau Penyengat’s potential and how it could be developed for tourism yet still maintain some autonomy from the state. Rather than having ad hoc developments on Pulau Penyengat built to satisfy government officials in Jakarta and Tanjung Pinang, this group believed that a grassroots group made up of islanders could steer Pulau Penyengat’s development in directions that would be more empowering for residents. Through their efforts they had hoped that they would be 261

able to inspire in their fellow villagers the same nostalgia and passion that they felt for

the pastimes lost in recent decades. They did not plan to rationalize takro by building

specific spaces for it, introducing uniforms or leagues as they wished for takro to be played as they remembered it: just friends and neighbours playing in their gardens for fun in their free time.

The efforts of this group have been largely ignored by other villagers partly because they lacked the expertise and funds to realize their ideas but largely because

their fellow villagers did not take their ideas seriously without the backing and

support of the state, an indication of the success of the state’s hegemony. After the state got involved in takro on the island, the group abandoned their efforts to nurture

takro as a more casual, grassroots local pastime. However, the group’s effort reveals a

tension in the state’s co-opting of ‘traditions’ for national purposes.

7.4.3 Gerak Jalan In this section I examine Gerak Jalan, the national marching competitions

held in villages and towns across the country and another way in which the state has

encouraged structured play in citizens’ leisure time. Civilian marching was introduced

by the Japanese who sought to ready Indonesians for battle. The boys in Figure 7.5

are marching in Seinendan, the Japanese Youth Corps, in which they were instructed

in the Greater East Asian ideology and received basic military training (Raben 1999).

As will be examined in this section, civilian marching has been continued into the present.

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Figure 7.5 - Indonesian boys on a Japanese marching drill

*image taken from Raben (1999)

Gerak Jalan is a fascinating example of a performance of national identity in

which the local community largely determines the character of the event. In contrast

to other formal performances of national identity as examined in Chapters Five and

Six, Gerak Jalan is voluntary. If citizens choose to participate, teams are able to select

their own uniforms and style of marching. They are also able to organize themselves

into teams of seven, demonstrating that the presence of the state is evident even in

details such as the size of the contingent. According to the competition rules, the

teams are judged on three qualities, spirit, discipline, and nationalism, and there is no

official guidance provided as to how these should be interpreted. In what follows, I

provide an ethnography of Gerak Jalan from August 2006.

Teams of seven islanders each have been marching around the island in the evenings. They are practising their marching technique and improving their stamina for a competition. The marchers form three consecutive pairs, with a leader marching next to the first pair. Some of the teams receive advice from coaches, older retired men with military experience. (see Figure 7.7) The atmosphere is festive. Spirits are high among the marchers. People watch the teams pass by from their yards or from a cafe. The teams are wearing casual sports clothes. There is a striking diversity to the marchers, although they are similar within one team. There are teams of children as young as five and six, teenagers, women and men into their fifties, teams of family members, and teams of people from work. The marchers pass by several times in one evening 263

and are taking the practices seriously, trying to keep formation, singing nationalist songs, and obeying commands from their leader.

Figure 7.6 - Practicing for the marching competition - uniforms are unveiled on competition day

Figure 7.7 - Getting coached for Gerak Jalan

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Figure 7.8 - Mass Gerak Jalan lessons

... Competition day has arrived. It is still early but the square is filling up with spectators and teams of marchers assembling for the 8:00 a.m. start time of the women’s competition. The men’s teams will flag off later that day at 2:00 p.m. There is an atmosphere of excitement with everyone checking out one anothers’ uniforms. All teams are wearing matching outfits, though no two teams are dressed alike. Some are wearing smart tracksuits, others are wearing creative ensembles of matching sarongs, matching caps, scarves, bandanas and so on.

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Figure 7.9 - Marching competition - at the starting line

The historic mosque is the backdrop for the starting activities. A line has been painted onto the path with the word ‘start’ painted in English, next to which there are two rows of plastic chairs reserved for V.I.P.s. The Pak Lurah sits in one of the chairs while most of the others remain empty. The teams are lined up at the start line while the MC is hosting the event with a microphone and sound system. The first team, a group of girls around twelve years old dressed in mauve pants and white t-shirts, is standing at attention in the sun waiting to begin. The 30 teams are getting into formation in order of the number assigned to them. A few people are taking photos while the MC introduces the event with a formal speech and passes the microphone to the Pak Lurah of Pulau Penyengat to say a few words:

I would like to offer my thanks to the organization of youths of Pulau Penyengat who organized this activity to commemorate the 61st anniversary of the Republic of Indonesia in this year of 2006. Hopefully activities such as this will raise the feeling of unity and friendship among all residents of Pulau Penyengat so that together we can unite the missions and visions of the people within the framework of development....

After the speeches are over, a man at the start line flags off the first team with a black and white chequered flag and the marching begins. It is a false start, as something was not ready with the organizers. The girls are called back to start again. Official photos are taken by a civil servant with the kelurahan office. The teams are flagged off again and they begin to march while singing a nationalistic marching song:

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...as long as there is life in our bodies, we will continue to be loyal, continue to be ready to guard Indonesia, we will continue to be loyal, continue to be ready to defend our country.....

Teams made up of little girls wearing their Senam Pagi Indonesia uniforms march by. Then a team of middle-aged women in smart matching tracksuits passes. They are serious and are marching dramatically as if they were as army troop:

Left....left....left, right, left! Left....left....left, right, left! Left....left....left, right, left! [TURN RIGHT!]

A group of teenage girls wearing funky costumes of bright pink t-shirt with ties and crooked caps passes, clapping and integrating dance moves into their marching while singing:

Hello! Hello Bandung! The city that I fondly remember, it’s been a long time since I’ve met you, now things are like hell, come on brother, let us struggle to return once again.....

The variety of costumes is remarkable. The teenage members on one team have sprayed their hair a matching green. Some wear head scarves with a matching flower pinned to the side, others wear matching bandanas. There are sarongs, flip-flops, matching shorts and t-shirts, leggings, face decorations such as stickers, glitter, matching make-up, and face paint used to create Indonesian flags on cheeks. Judges have been planted in secret locations along the route to ensure that teams maintain ‘discipline’ and ‘spirit’ for the entire march. The teams are vocal for the duration of the two kilometre march, singing one of several patriotic marching songs and shouting military style commands.

One!...... Two!...... Three!...... Four!...... One, two, three, four! Left....left....left, right, left!

At the end of the route, teams cross a finish line painted (also in English) on the ground of the opposite side of the square. The final stretch of the path leading to the square is lined with spectators and there is a sense of excitement in the air as the teams come in. Photos and video are being taken of the marchers, though they do not break out of formation or change their marching style until they have crossed the finish line.

There is a break of several hours after the last team finishes until the men’s competition begins at 2pm. While the females did one short loop of under two kilometres, the men are to walk a longer route around the island two times, as it is assumed that the men will not be challenged by so short a route. The teams assemble in a different part of the island to begin their slightly different route. Again, it is apparent that much effort and consideration has gone into the uniforms. The men’s teams wear smart tracksuits, white gloves, flip-flops, bright colours in their hair, sunglasses, bandanas (on their heads, necks, over one eye, around one leg), caps, sarongs, military attire, and so on. 267

The men’s teams begin and spectators line the paths to check out their costumes and their style. It is extremely hot and the crowds are thinner that in the morning. A heavy metal team wearing sunglasses passes with the marching leader acting as lead singer, belting out patriotic songs in a raspy heavy metal voice. A group of tiny children who look about five passes by and looks tired. A group of young police officers marches by wearing sharp red and white tracksuits, white gloves and matching red and white running shoes. It has just been announced that the male teams will only make one lap. A group of teenage boys dressed in sarongs and sprayed white hair march by hunched over, acting like old men.

Figure 7.10 - Watching Gerak Jalan

With over 30 female teams and just under 30 male teams participating, the

total number of marchers was over 400. With 2,000 residents, 20% of the entire

population of the island participated as marchers in 2006. There was no coercion

involved in signing participants up: villagers formed teams and signed up voluntarily.

I suggest that there are several reasons for the popularity of the event. Cash prizes for

the top three teams in both the men’s and women’s competition attracted participants.

However, the cash prizes were not nearly enough to cover the cost of the uniforms /

costumes worn by many of the teams and certainly not a large sum after being divided by seven. The real draw for participants was the opportunity to perform for the 268

community. The theatricality of the event is clear to the participants: Gerak Jalan is a

chance for villagers to present themselves in a way that their neighbours, friends and

family do not normally see them. While the format of the competition appears to be

rigid (e.g. marching in sets of seven), participants work within the given constraints

and creatively interpret the judging criteria (discipline, nationalism and spirit) in a

way that combines displays of national identity with more personal expressions. In a strategic move to boost their team’s chances, many marchers sought out

comparatively wealthy individuals to act as sponsors who would pay for their uniforms. This was an opportunity for the sponsor to gain local prestige and for the

marchers to obtain the desired ‘look’ for their performance.

While there is a conscious layer to this performance in which participants are

aware they are acting out an aspect of national identity as well as an aspect of their

more personal identity, there is also a more subconscious layer in which participants

are unquestioning that Gerak Jalan is an ‘Indonesian’ thing to do and take it for

granted that the state is organizing their leisure time. Furthermore, Gerak Jalan, like

other leisure activities, is citational as it has always existed in living memory on the

island. It is a familiar format to participants and spectators that cites previous nation-

related marching activities and serves to normalize the relationship between marching

and the nation.

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Figure 7.11 - Marching competition uniforms - the winning team and their sponsor

Figure 7.12 - Marching competition uniforms: Conservative nationalism

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Figure 7.13 - Marching competition uniforms: Cool nationalists

Figure 7.14 - Marching competition uniforms: punk nationalists?

7.4.4 ‘Unity in Diversity’ through dance Similar to takro, dance was (re)introduced as part of recent state initiatives

following decentralization policies and ethnicization efforts after the formation of

Riau Islands Province. On Pulau Penyengat, the state paid for a stage to be built on 271

the edge of the square and for a dance instructor from elsewhere in Riau, from whom

the dancers have come to know their ‘traditional’ dances.

A senior civil servant in the Ministry of Culture and Tourism at the provincial

level explains the rationale underpinning the development of dance in Pulau

Penyengat and the Riau Islands more widely:

Have you been to Taman Mini? ... there are dancers who represent each province there. In one day you can see culture from Bali, Java, Sulawesi... every culture in Indonesia. ... Kepri is a new province... we need to cultivate our dance so people from around Indonesia will see, “Oh, that is what Kepri culture is.” ... We want to start children learning dance when they are young ... to improve the cultural environment on Penyengat. (Pak Acay, 15 February, 2006)

Dance lessons take place regularly on the stage in the square. Dance students include children of about 6 or 7 and teenagers, the oldest students just in their early

20s. Sometimes the dancers are accompanied by a gendang [Malay drum] lesson, giving budding gendang players and budding dancers a chance to practice together.

Due to the centrality of the main square and the numerous nearby cafes, practices often gather crowds of spectators, particularly evening practices accompanied by gendang playing. Since the dance classes are divided roughly by age and include males and females, dance practice is a time for friends and peers to interact socially.

Where and when formal dance performances take place is usually determined by various levels of the state, although dancers also perform at the occasional wedding. The dance groups on Pulau Penyengat have been invited to perform at various functions by the provincial government in Tanjung Pinang such as

Independence Day festivities, a promotional event for travel agents based in

Singapore and Malaysia sponsored by the Kepri government, a recent ‘Festival

Internasional Budaya Melayu’ (International Festival of Malay Culture), and for visiting dignitaries both in Tanjung Pinang and Pulau Penyengat. Dancers from Pulau 272

Penyengat have been sent to Jakarta to represent Kepri for televised national events at which each province is represented by a dance group in ‘traditional’ costume. In this event, a group of young dancers from each province is led to the stage for an abbreviated sample of a ‘traditional’ dance to provide the national audience with a taste of the breadth of cultures in Indonesia.

Dance can highlight the often blurry line between work and leisure (Neulinger

1981). However, the dancers on Pulau Penyengat consider their dancing as a leisure

activity or hobi [hobby] rather than as work. Despite the range of events at which

some dancers from the island have performed, most people taking dance classes on

Pulau Penyengat do not perform for official functions. Overall, there are few

performances – certainly too few for any dancer to earn a living without another

source of income. Most of the time spent dancing is at practice on evenings and

weekends on Pulau Penyengat’s stage.

The state-funded stage in the square on Pulau Penyengat is one of many such

stages in small communities across Indonesia where youths rehearse their ‘traditional’

dances for national events. The development of stages as venues for dance has been

noted by Soedarsono (1968) as an effort to secularize dance and reclaim it for

nationalistic purposes. As pointed out by Pak Acay, the two performance stages on

Pulau Penyengat (at the Balai Adat and in the main square) are clearly patterned with

Taman Mini’s provincial displays in mind, each of which features a stage, and

demonstrates a national rationalization of dance. This illustrates the intimate

intertwining of dance and the nation, even at the village level.

The adornment of Pulau Penyengat dancers is a crucial aspect of their

performance and marks a shift in what dancers wore in the past. While current 273

dancers’ costumes are elaborate and showy, costumes in the Old Order were more simple:

When I was little dancers wore more simple clothes. The dancers can wear big gold headdresses now because these costumes can be bought in shops. These decorations (sequins) and cloth (lamé) are a new style... we did not have such cloth as this before. (Bu Erlina, 14 February, 2006)

Significantly, the adults on Pulau Penyengat did not grow up learning dance. The

Malay traditions the state is currently introducing on Pulau Penyengat never existed on the island previously or they did in a different form which died out. Because of this, the teacher was brought from Bintan Island and the dance moves are blended with other styles, particularly from Balinese dancing. Some villagers recognize this as inauthentic while others do not notice because they have nothing to compare it to.

Figure 7.15 - A Pulau Penyengat dance group after a performance

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Figure 7.16 - Pulau Penyengat dancers

For the Pulau Penyengat dancers, their costumes and dances must hold up

against dances of the other provinces. This means learning the most showy, energetic

dances to capture the attention of the audience, usually conceptualized as consisting

of people other than residents of Pulau Penyengat. Since the New Order’s push to develop and codify national dance, the original meaning and context of the dances

have been lost. Dances are now abbreviated blends to appeal to an outside, primarily

government or local tourist audience. Since dancers mainly perform as part of state-

arranged events such as culture festivals in Riau and Jakarta, to entertain visiting dignitaries, and at provincial business events, the original contexts have been lost

(Talamantes 2006). While the dances would originally have been performed in more local contexts, the staging of them next to other dances has affected the styles of choreography of the dancing and how performers imagine their dancing in the pantheon of Indonesian dance (Talamantes 2006). For example, the dances are abbreviated versions or excerpts of longer dances, often including only the most exciting and showy parts. The choreographers aim to have their dancers stand out 275

through the use of more flamboyant costumes and dramatic moves that will be visible

from a distance at large performances or when the dancers are shrunk for a television

audience. More subtle choreography that may be appreciated in more intimate

gatherings is abandoned in favour of choreography intended to please an audience

unfamiliar with the meanings and subtleties of the dance.

The following is an ethnography of a small Riau Islands Province

entertainment review performed at a hotel in Tanjung Pinang. The occasion was a

weekend in which the Ministry of Culture and Tourism hosted a group of Singaporean travel agents in order to promote tourism in the province. The Pulau Penyengat dancers performed several dances for the travel agents to show off the cultural side of the Riau Islands:

In the evening there is a banquet dinner for the travel agents in a cramped room at a ‘resort’ hotel near Tanjung Pinang. After the plates are cleared, the entertainment begins. A group of old men weave between the tables to get to the make-shift stage area at the back of the room. I had seen this group several times at weddings. They play one instrumental song with a violin, gendang [drum], and harmonium. As they begin their second song, the dancers are cued and enter the room in a line, weaving between tables to get to the tiny stage. The small group of teenage dancers wear shiny yellow and orange baju Melayu, costume jewellery and intricate crowns. They have theatrical make-up on that is meant to be seen from a distance, along with gold glitter on their faces. In the neon lights of the banquet hall and at close proximity, the ensembles appear garish. The dancers are performing a royal dance that symbolizes royal hospitality. They hold tempat sirih, or betelnut sets, what guests would have immediately been offered in a Malay home in the past. The dance symbolizes the welcoming of a royal visitor that would have been performed by court dancers for an honoured guest. In this case, the Singaporean tourists are the honoured guests and Riau Islands Province is the host. The stage area is too small for the choreography. The dancers are unable to line up in formation as the dance requires so two of the dancers are positioned between tables. At one point in the dance there is a symbolic offering of the betelnut to the honoured guest. In this case, there are several dozen honoured guests so the dancer offers it to an older Singaporean man sitting near the stage. When the dancer is on her knee looking up at him with the betelnut set extended out, he takes a flash photo. The dance soon ends and the dancers file out of the room. The next on stage is a professional singer. She sings a popular Malay ballad from decades ago that the travel agents all know and sing along to. 276

Next is a pop song in Mandarin. She then exits the stage. The entertainment is over and the travel agents have had a taste of what Riau has to offer.

Figure 7.17 - Pulau Penyengat Dancer with betelnut set (same girl also in Fig. 7.11, far left)

The above passage illustrates the current context for dance. The performances are abbreviated and the audience is unfamiliar with the meanings of the dance. The dancers are part of an overall strategy to develop Riau Islands Province as a new and unique part of Indonesia and as a tourist destination where one can see both ‘real’ traditional culture and global pop.

There is the sense among some performers and audience members that the costumes and choreography are not actually authentic, but are the inventions of a dance instructor influenced by the dance of other provinces.

See how they stick out their behinds? This is not true Malay style. This dancing is influence by Balinese dancing... Balinese people always stand in this position to dance. [bends over with bottom sticking out] We Malays dance standing straight up like this. (Ninik, 17 February, 2006)

However, despite some suspicions about the authenticity of the dance, it is generally a source of pride for people in Pulau Penyengat. Through dance, a number 277

of Pulau Penyengat youth have travelled to perform, an opportunity that would have

been otherwise impossible. So far, one group has performed on national television, something that brought the dancers prestige and the village pride. Many residents

expressed pride that the dancers were carrying out Malay culture and traditions. Pak

Deni expressed what many villagers felt about the dancing and its important role in

preserving culture:

We cannot forget about our culture in this modern era. We need to hold on to our traditions. It’s not good to just watch TV, play video games, play with handphones [mobile phones] … people have an obsession with these things … they don’t want to be considered kampungan [village-like]… (November 13, 2006)

Pak Deni is not conscious of any lack of authenticity in the dance and feels that as

long as it is ‘Melayu’ it is budaya kita, or ‘our culture’. This comment reveals

frustration in the tendency for villagers to reject aspects of traditional life as being

kampungan [backward, boorish]. This comment also reveals how some villagers feel

a sense of loss, yet blame villagers themselves rather than the state. To Pak Deni, the

state in this case is resurrecting and supporting lost Malay culture on the island. Pak

Deni is not concerned with how the island or province is represented nationally or

internationally but how dance affects the cultural life of the village. While Sayed, as

discussed earlier, expresses frustration at what he perceives as the lack of authenticity

of ‘ethnic’ culture that has been (re)introduced by the state, Pak Deni and many other

islanders see these changes as positive steps, regardless of how they were introduced.

Many islanders, particularly middle-aged residents and older who have seen the rapid

loss of cultural activities in their lifetime such as Pak Deni, see modernity as a force

that is eroding traditional Malay ways of life. So while Pak Deni is generally critical

of the state, he is willing to choose his battles and support state-initiated cultural

activities on the island so long as they foster his understanding of Malay culture. 278

Indeed, while elements of doubt about the authenticity of the dance classes may be

widespread, most are willing to overlook this for the Malay culture that the classes

have helped bring to the island.

Others agree that there must be a conscious effort to maintain or revive

cultural activities on Pulau Penyengat but are more selective as to how this should be

done and by whom. Sayed represents some of the descendents of the island’s royal

family who feel entitled to control developments on the island to some degree. Some

of these people feel they ought to have been consulted and criticize the dance classes

as a way of expressing feelings of having been disenfranchised.

Similarly, Veronika, a woman in her mid-20s whose close friend is a dancer,

also expresses frustration over several aspects relating to the state involvement on the

island: the state’s lack of willingness to consult with villagers, the complacency and lack of motivation of villagers, and the state’s lack of support for non-cultural matters on the island (such as improved school facilities).

People on Pulau Penyengat will not start dance classes on their own. ... People here cannot help themselves. ... Even though the classes are very popular and people enjoy watching them, we would not have them without the help of the government. ... we need the government too much... It would be better if we could start things ourselves because the government comes here and says “we want it like this or like that” and we cannot control it. Dance classes are good and they are popular but why is dance a priority? Is a library not more important than dance classes? Better if my daughter can read than dance! But the government people come here and change the island... they build a stage, build a Balai Adat [traditional community hall], build a tourist information building... but they do not ask us what we want. Only things they think tourists will like... (Veronika, 7 February, 2006)

Sayed’s and Veronika’s comments reveal a frustration with the government’s

relationship with the islanders and the increasingly high level of state involvement in

Pulau Penyengat’s affairs combined with the frustration that the island is dependent

on the state to develop such programs. While they support the idea of islanders

learning Malay dance, they feel that this is something the community ought to be able 279

to organize themselves without state involvement. Veronika is particularly frustrated by her belief that the state has supported projects that showcase Pulau Penyengat as a

Malay cultural showpiece when the community has more basic and urgent needs.

While some people such as Sayed and Veronika are critical about the level of state involvement in Pulau Penyengat’s cultural affairs, others take pride in the recent cultural developments on the island for the same reasons that many take pride in

Taman Mini.

There are more visitors now than before... Indonesian tourists from Sumatra, Batam, Jakarta... There are government people and lots of new buildings. ... I feel proud that people from outside want to come to Penyengat. ... The next project is to build a public toilet for visitors – this is really important. (Pak Fazrul, 18 March, 2006)

Penyengat looks very pretty, right? Very exotic! Many of the old buildings from before [buildings from the Riau Sultanate] have been fixed and renovated and there is more of a “Malay flavour” now. I take couples to be photographed on Pulau Penyengat now [for their wedding photos]. (Jojo, 16 October, 2006)

The development is good for Penyengat. The stage has been expanded because all the dancers could not fit on the old one. ... My son takes dance classes on Fridays – this is a good activity. Hopefully more children on Penyengat will learn to dance. (Rosyani, 20 October, 2006)

Children and youth are the targeted group encouraged to join the dance classes

organized by the state while married villagers in their mid-twenties and older do not

join, although officially they are allowed to if they wished. As Bu Niar, a woman who

works in one of two tiny souvenir shops on the island, located in a nook next to the performance stage, explained, the dance programs were for young people. When asked whether she would like to dance, Bu Niar and others felt that one needed a

‘young body’ in order to dance:

The bodies of dancers must be slim and graceful, not like me. They need to have energy… if our dancers were fat like me, everyone would laugh at Penyengat people! … They go to Jakarta and perform sometimes… some of them dance on TV too… they represent Penyengat people and Malays so they 280

have to look beautiful. … No use for me to dance – I’m already old and fat! (Bu Niar, 20 February, 2006).

This comment makes it clear that the state targets particular citizens to represent an

ideal through dance. This is reminiscent of the standardization required in televised

Upacara Bendera events at the national level which screens students for their height

and bodily dimensions to ensure uniformity and decrease individuality. In both cases,

participation is limited to citizens whose bodies represent national ideals. Trim,

orderly, and cultured yet under control, these ideal bodies function as a metonym for

the nation. Bu Niar’s comment reveals her awareness that the dancers represent Kepri

identity on a national level and that not just any ‘body’ can equally perform this role.

The examples of the dancers and the student participants in the national-level

Upacara Bendera illustrate that the state is present in citizens’ bodies, and that, in

particular contexts, the state and citizens’ bodies merge.

7.5 Silences of state leisure Significantly, the state has chosen only a narrow selection of recreational

activities to support and develop on a national scale. It is necessary at this point to

examine some of the activities that the state has not chosen to develop and why.

Among the host of pursuits the state could have chosen to encourage in Pulau

Penyengat, only volleyball and football, and in more recent years, dance and takro, have received dedicated, permanent spaces and continued state support in the form of funding, tournament organization and regular involvement / surveillance of visiting state representatives to the island. According to the state officials I spoke with in the

Ministry of Sports in Tanjung Pinang as well as Senayan, the national sports complex in Jakarta, there are several reasons for the absence of other sports. The reason most cited is financial. According to a fitness trainer of the national baseball team in 281

Jakarta, there have been difficulties widely introducing most sports to the general

populace because the equipment must be imported and is very expensive:

In other countries, baseball is played by the poor, right? In Indonesia baseball is for the rich. Baseball gloves have to be imported and cost 500,000-800,000 rupiah – each! Bats must be of international quality and are not made in Indonesia. What’s more is Indonesia is very crowded and baseball requires a lot of space. Where can kids practice even if they do have equipment? All of the national players here come from the middle or upper class … we don’t have a lot [of players] to select from. (Pak Agus, 7 May, 2007)

Similarly, for many residents of Pulau Penyengat, badminton is considered to be a

pastime of the rich due to the prohibitive cost of the necessary equipment. Badminton

racquets are a luxury item many people are unable to afford or unwilling to prioritize

in their household budgets. In contrast, in takro and volleyball, only one ball is shared

by many people making the shared costs lower.

Silat, the popular Malay martial art, has seen a resurgence in Indonesia with

many silat clubs and competitions. However, the state has not been as active in

promoting silat as volleyball. While I have not been able to confirm why, I suggest

that there are several reasons. The first is that volleyball is an international sport

which the Indonesian state perceives to bring international (especially Western) respect. The second is that it is understood as modern, it is seen as being able to inculcate modern values in its players, and it encourages behaviour valued by the state such as teamwork, conformity and discipline. National sports are Olympic sports, a western-centric value that is reflected down to the village level. While pencak silat has undergone a process of rationalization and standardization first under the Japanese and again in more recent years in Jakarta and in many towns and cities in Indonesia, pencak silat infrastructure and facilities are still not a part of Pulau Penyengat’s landscapes. Third, pencak silat is respected as a powerful form of fighting. Pencak

silat, or silat practitioners, fight individually in battles that require physical strength 282

and cunning and, like the colonial governments before them, these are not qualities

the state wishes to cultivate in its population. Volleyball, on the other hand, cultivates

teamwork and uniformity in an international format. While teamwork and conformity

are also ideologically constructed, both are valued by the state as positive

characteristics, assuming they are not used against the state. During the Dutch

colonial era and the revolution, there are tales of pencak silat being used against the

enemy. The link between pencak silat and resistance to a dominant force has perhaps resulted in its deprioritization in state leisure planning.

Pencak silat has not been continued as part of villagers’ leisure activities. I

could not locate anyone who had skills beyond some rudimentary moves in pencak

silat, although several older men were purportedly skilled when they were younger.

Villagers see this as part of a general loss of traditional culture for which they primarily blame themselves or, the ‘youth’ for not showing adequate interest in their traditions. Some villagers expressed a deep sense of loss when asked about the practice of pencak silat.

Our traditions are gone. In the past, all boys would learn pencak silat... they could protect their families. Now, who wants to learn? (Pak Sudirman, 16 August, 2006)

Others were more ambivalent, suggesting that pencak silat was no longer useful in the

‘modern’ era:

We do not need knowledge of pencak silat now – what is the use? We have locks on our doors for thieves. Sometimes people fight with a parang [machete used in the jungle]... it does the job much faster! [laughs] ... (Hendri, 15 February, 2006)

Others felt that there were more ‘modern’ things to do:

now we have lots of things to do – watch TV, sit and talk ... we do not need to fight, go to war. (Yanto, 17 August, 2006)

283

By omitting pencak silat and other indigenous activities from funding, the state is revitalizing ‘tradition’ in the recuperated form of Taman Mini-ized culture, which narrowly proscribes the ways in which culture is to be expressed and recognizes a narrow spectrum of culture. As the residents of Pulau Penyengat (and the wider Malay community) have not continued many of their traditional leisure activities, the state is generally seen as a positive force for preserving and supporting local culture on the island, though there are some contrary views on the state’s roles among some villagers.

7.6 Summary Leisure activities have been a key way in which the body and the nation

intersect on Pulau Penyengat and an important way in which villagers participate in

national activities. State-introduced leisure programs have generally been largely

successful in encouraging particular performances of national identity as they

generate much enthusiasm and a high level of participation. Because leisure activities

are experienced by the population as fun and informal, the ideological dimensions are

more successfully disguised than in the contexts of work and education, as discussed

in Chapters Five and Six.

As demonstrated in this chapter, many of the activities in which the people of

Pulau Penyengat have been implicated have been state strategies to ‘modernize’

villagers through structured play. The notion that villagers are an inherently

‘substandard’ population draws from colonial philosophy and has been maintained

over time and across governments using similar strategies of control. Thus, strategies

of population improvement are intertwined with nation-building efforts in Indonesia

and have affected the leisure activities of residents on Pulau Penyengat. The

(re)introduction of selected activities (volleyball, takro, marching, and dance) is not 284

innocent and villagers are keenly aware of the linkages between these activities and the nation: each activity is organized by the state and received support in the form of an official designated space and funding. Furthermore, excellence in these activities can mean participating in regional and national events in Jakarta.

There is an unevenness of participation in national leisure activities on Pulau

Penyengat that points to different expectations for different citizens based on their bodies. This selectivity betrays the activities as being not just for fun, but as also a manifestation of and metonym for the state. Unevenness also stems from residents’ participation across activities. While the state has provided spaces for several sports, villagers have rejected some, demonstrating that residents of Pulau Penyengat have a high degree of agency when it comes to choosing activities in which to participate. In the most regimented national activities such as Gerak Jalan, residents perform the activity in ways unintended by the state. While on one level, it is clear to participants that Gerak Jalan is an activity closely linked to the nation, citizens reinterpret the purpose and meaning in their local context, using national leisure activities to gain prestige in the village.

285

Chapter 8 – Conclusion

The central focus of this thesis has been the examination of how Indonesian national identity is constructed through the bodily performances of its citizenry.

Through analyzing the state’s nation-building efforts on Pulau Penyengat I have

investigated the ‘localization of production of subject positions’ (Philpott 2000: 177) in three realms of life: work, education, and leisure. My empirical analysis demonstrates how performance and performativity are key aspects of how national identity is perpetuated and challenged in Indonesia. State nation-building practices are not simply and unproblematically replicated, and this thesis has sought to examine how the state’s hegemonic attempts at uniformity were resisted, reinterpreted, renegotiated or were ‘lost in translation’ to varying extents between Jakarta and Pulau

Penyengat.

This final chapter summarizes the key arguments and empirical findings of the

thesis and is divided into three sections. First, I review how each chapter addresses the

research questions. Second, I summarize key conceptual ideas explored in this thesis.

Third, I point out limitations of the research and offer several directions for future

research.

8.1 Chapter summaries In Chapter One, I broadly outlined the research problems I set out to examine: first, to understand how performance is used in the formation, dissemination and enforcement of Indonesian national identity and to analyze the state’s strategies in encouraging certain performances in its citizenry; second, to gain an understanding of the extent to which performances of national identity have changed over time; third, to examine how intended meanings of national identities are understood, accepted, resisted and reinterpreted by the citizenry. Within the context of Pulau Penyengat, a 286

small community far from Jakarta and, until recently, considered in a peripheral

region, I set out to examine how concepts of national identity reached people and

served to inculcate them with national ideology. While existing literature on Riau and

Pulau Penyengat has focused on historical, cultural or geopolitical aspects, activities

relating to nation-building have been neglected. I introduced performance and

performativity as conceptual approaches to the study of national identity to explore the embodied dimension to nation-building.

Chapter Two reviewed bodies of literature relating to my thesis topic, including ideology and power relations in landscape, performance and performativity,

Indonesian nationalism and power in Indonesian society. Several key strands emerged from the literature that justified and guided my study. First, there have been increasing calls across disciplines to place more emphasis on dynamism, movement, and embodiment as well as the sense that identity, power, and landscape require active maintenance. While change is often initiated at a conceptual or policy level, its maintenance is fruitfully examined through grounded empirical study of people and their actions, particularly those that are commonplace and everyday rather than the spectacular.

I highlighted the disembodied approaches to Indonesian nationalism and the tendency to focus on spectacular expressions of national identity in the capital city rather than the more everyday ways in which national identity affects people at the village level. This chapter also points out the overwhelming focus on Java by scholars of Indonesia, particularly with regards to nation-building before and after

Independence and the lack of material written about the experience of the Outer

Islands, particularly the Riau Islands. 287

Chapter Three provided a discussion of the methodologies I employed in my

fieldwork and extends theoretical considerations to the specific context of Pulau

Penyengat. I examined how my positionality and personality helped to form the

methods employed. My fieldwork examined the various performances of identity as

well as people’s interpretations of their performances through ethnography,

interviews, group discussions, participant observation and recorded their activities through video and photographs.

Chapter Four demonstrated some of the colonial influences on Indonesian nationalism both through borrowing from and as a reaction against occupying powers.

Through geography, language, race, and national philosophy, I trace some of the key

features of Indonesian nationalism that took root prior to Independence.

Chapters Five to Seven are empirical chapters that each explored different realms of life on Pulau Penyengat reflecting how villagers have been affected by state nationalizing policies since Independence.

Chapter Five examined how work and national identity are linked and how certain villagers were encouraged to perform a version of national identity in the

workplace. Through an empirical analysis of state workers, non-state workers and

‘volunteers’, the chapter demonstrates that there is a sharp division between how civil

servants and non-civil servants are expected to be involved in national activities. This

analysis revealed that among civil servants, performances of national identity are

uneven from the national level, the provincial level and Pulau Penyengat, within

Pulau Penyengat itself and even within the same office. Directives from the state are

interpreted in a range of ways that resulted in the imperfect maintenance of national

identity. Furthermore, national performances are often strategically co-opted by non-

state workers for personal prestige rather than out of a sense of nationalism. 288

Chapter Six investigated schooling as a site of performing national identity. In

Pulau Penyengat, schools are where islanders most regularly experience the nation as

performers. I focused my study on four areas that highlight how education and nation-

building are intertwined: uniforms, Senam Pagi Indonesia, Upacara Bendera and

‘ethnic’ education. For many residents of Pulau Penyengat, schooling is the only time in their lives when they feel they play an active role in official national activities. It therefore constitutes a formative period for the inculcation of national identity.

Through the four aspects of education on Pulau Penyengat that I examined, it was apparent that national performances were made familiar and normalized to students through repetition. The subconscious repetition of state values performed simultaneously with more conscious, strategic performances highlights the layered nature of performing national identity. Through these performances, a social hierarchy was maintained and students were taught their relationship to the state, to their teachers and to one another. An analysis of performances of national identity in the context of schools also reveals broad attempts at standardization and rationalization through clothes, group ceremonies and through promoting understandings of ethnicity that serve to simplify Indonesia’s ethnic diversity into homogeneous categories.

Chapter Seven considered how play and nation-building are intertwined on

Pulau Penyengat. While leisure activities are more fun and voluntary than other performances of national identity, this chapter investigated how they can be highly politicized and intimately linked with national ideology. Focusing on volleyball, takro, Gerak Jalan, and dance, I examined how national ideology was translated into policies that targeted citizens through the creation of various sports facilities meant to encourage the participation of residents of Pulau Penyengat. My empirical examples revealed that state-initiated programs for leisure time attract residents’ participation 289

unevenly, primarily favouring younger residents, those in higher socio-economic

classes, those with more predictable leisure time, for example those who work in offices over more seasonal occupations. Participation in state-initiated leisure activities on Pulau Penyengat is remarkably high and has resulted in increased feelings of being connected to the greater unit of the nation through tournaments, through the recognition that it is possible to advance from Pulau Penyengat activities to the provincial level, the national level and even to the international level representing Indonesia.

8.2 Contributions and findings This thesis has sought to provide an understanding of how national identity is

embodied using the concepts of performance and performativity. Across the three

empirical chapters, a number of common themes have emerged.

Many of the state’s nationalization strategies examined in this thesis have

endured over time and across changes in leadership. While there has been open

criticism and re-evaluation of past political regimes, the way in which residents have

experienced the nation is characterized by a high degree of continuity. Many changes

have been enacted through decentralization policies, providing greater autonomy to

the provinces, several new provinces have been created, and there is arguably greater

democracy in how leaders are selected both at the provincial and national levels than

previously in Indonesia’s history. In the Riau Islands, the economy is strong from oil

and manufacturing revenues. However, despite these significant national and regional

changes, my research reveals that there is a great continuity in how residents on Pulau

Penyengat experience the nation. The longevity of national traditions in the

workplace, in the education system, and in citizen leisure time, even beyond the fall

of Suharto, demonstrates how valued they are by the state in maintaining the concept 290

of ‘Indonesia’. Their longevity also implies that the many incursions by the state into

Pulau Penyengat are not experienced as oppressive. As Parker (2003) observes in the context of Bali, ‘the state’ operates through village people rather than as an external oppressive force: it is neighbours, relatives, friends who constitute ‘the state’. While an exertion of power relations is indeed present, there is generally not a conscious lived experience of state oppression in Pulau Penyengat. The constant iteration of norms, however, recalls Butler’s performativity and illustrates how citizens are not necessarily conscious of ways they are dominated. Furthermore, as many performances of national identity in which residents of Pulau Penyengat are encouraged to engage are reinterpreted in a local context, the sense of an all-powerful state is diminished. Also, as locals are able to use many performances for personal advantage, there is little reason for national culture to have been rejected in Pulau

Penyengat.

My research demonstrates that the state uses coerced citizen performance as a key strategy for ideological inculcation relating to nation-building. Engaging the bodies of citizens for nationalistic purposes is a level of control that has several effects. It supplements what citizens have been taught in school about national ideology through the national curriculum. There is an experiential difference between learning about ethnic diversity, for example, from a poster on a classroom wall or in a text book and acting out the state’s notion of ethnic diversity through dressing in elaborate costumes in a public parade. Seeing one’s friends, family, neighbours and other Indonesians one does not know appearing to conform through uniforms and performance is a powerful and persuasive strategy that I suggest has been effective in normalizing the state’s national ideology to residents of Pulau Penyengat. Based on my empirical evidence, even when performers questioned, criticized or dismissed the 291

state’s methods, they unconsciously accept its central premise, making the inculcation

of national identity largely successful. For example, while people may be critical or at

least conscious of the arbitrariness of which uniform should be worn on which day, the premise that uniforms must be worn at particular times or places (or even at all), and the legitimacy of the state’s power to compel uniform wearing, is not questioned.

Through examining performances of national identity on Pulau Penyengat, my research shows that existing conceptualizations of performance are inadequate to understand the layered and complex nature of embodied individual performative practices. While the main geographical approaches to performance form a dichotomy around the work of Goffman’s conscious subject and Butler’s unconscious subject, as my research illustrates, it is profitable to borrow from the work of both and to restructure them. Butler developed the concepts of performance and performativity specifically to denaturalize gender identities, and it can be argued that one’s national identity is a far more conscious and denaturalized aspect of the self than one’s gender.

However, people are often unaware of the cultural forms they are citing as the meaning, through repeated performances, has been naturalized. Thus, a multi-layered agency with varying degrees of awareness and intentionality lies behind national performances.

I do not wish to overstate the role of performance in Indonesian nation- building in Pulau Penyengat over other forms of ideological inculcation, particularly school curricula, television, radio and music. However, adopting performance as a

conceptual framework has provided an opportunity for a focused study of nationalization strategies that have been under-examined to date. One of the main contributions of this thesis is to focus on the embodied nature of national identity 292

rather than textual elements in order to examine how people live, experience, and

constitute the nation.

Empirical analyses of work, education, and play revealed that Pulau Penyengat

society has experienced a broad trend towards increased rationalization as it has been

brought into the fold of the nation over time. With an expanding national bureaucracy, there are more positions available for residents of Pulau Penyengat to find employment as state workers, and with every resident of Pulau Penyengat now attending school, the state has direct access to more citizens. Through many organized, state-initiated leisure activities such as volleyball, takro, dance classes, and marching competitions, more villagers are spending their free time in ways sanctioned by the state.

Despite the strength and micromanaging approach of the Indonesian state, its nationalization strategies are not totalizing as hegemony is never complete. In interviewing villagers about their understanding of their performances of national identity, it is clear that performances are often less about a deep desire to express national identity than they are opportunities to cultivate personal prestige within the community. Non-state workers, for example, strategically decide to adopt state workers’ uniforms for personal reasons, a strategy that co-opts the trappings of the state for use in other spheres. I suggest that this strategy serves to reify state power rather than to challenge it.

My research also illustrates the unevenness of nationalization across space and across the citizenry. A variety of reasons for the unevenness emerged through examining the empirical examples of work, education and play. First, the state targets different segments of the population for different activities and holds different expectations as to how different citizens should perform, resulting in different levels 293

of participation across the populace. Such unevenness often reinforces existing social

hierarchies and makes it clear that citizens have unequal relationships to the state.

Second, at each level of bureaucracy, there are opportunities for varied interpretations

of state policies. By the time policies reach Pulau Penyengat, they have been filtered

through numerous levels of bureaucracy down to the local island state representatives,

each level of which may interpret state directives in a different way. Across the

population, expectations vary as to who should participate and who should not and

how one ought to perform in a given activity. Individuals’ conscious

(re)interpretations as well as unconscious slippages also serve to contribute to an

unevenness in the performances.

The audience is a crucial aspect of performance. As the empirical examples reveal, the participants are simultaneously the performers and the audience; they are intended to produce and consume the event while internalizing its meaning. The sight of groups of citizens brought together and dressed alike creates the appearance of solidarity and support for the state. The general public is also an important part of performances of national identity. Performances are staged in public places that are visually accessible to passersby. Communicating ideology is a key motivation behind the state’s desire for citizens to perform national activities in public places as the national spectacles created through performance require an audience or they are not staged at all.

Performances of national identity are a component of the state’s belief that its

citizens are somehow lacking and require ‘improvement’ and ‘modernization’,

particularly those who live in villages. This logic assumes that being Indonesian is

something that requires training through instruction and repetitive performance in

contexts including, but not limited to, work, education and play. This belief in the 294

need to improve the quality of the citizenry was translated into various state initiatives examined in this thesis which have sought to control how citizens behaved through

infrastructure and organized programs.

8.3 Directions for future research Through the process of writing this thesis, several avenues for future research

have emerged. First, through my research I recognized the profound impact that the

Japanese have had on Indonesian national identity and cultures. A comparative

analysis between other areas formerly occupied by the Japanese would be valuable in order to examine the extent to which they also adopted national performances introduced by the Japanese. A comparison with performances of national identity in

Japan would also be important in helping to understand how much of pre-war

Japanese state culture is carried out only in their former territories.

Second, while I examined the performative aspect of national identity in the

context of a small Malay community in the ‘Outer Islands’, other peripheral contexts

would provide insight about the level of consistency in the process of nationalization in Indonesia as well as the varied way in which nationalization strategies are

interpreted in various parts of Indonesia. A comparative analysis of a more central

part of Indonesia would be helpful in understanding the unevenness of nation-building

programs and the extent to which locals were expected to participate across the

archipelago.

Third, as a village analysis, my thesis examines a particular segment of the

population and excludes many important groups. For example, in my examination of

performances of national identity in the workplace in Chapter Five, my study is

limited to only those professions common to Pulau Penyengat. There is enormous

scope to examine how workers in other work situations such as factories and 295

agriculture are inculcated with national ideology. Factories in Batam in particular

offer interesting avenues for study in that they are not traditional communities

consisting of extended families and multiple generations, but are usually young

people from across the archipelago. How the state reaches workers in non-traditional

social environments (often employed by foreign companies) would provide further

insight into how performances of national identity are uneven and are reliant on

community social and bureaucratic structures for their implementation.

8.4 Final comments Performance and performativity are key ways in which to understand

embodied Indonesian national identity. Not only is identity constituted by the abstract,

it is also inculcated, maintained and challenged bodily through the performances of citizenry. While the Indonesian state’s official version of national identity appears in many ways to be homogenous and the result of hegemonic state norms, performances of national identity are uneven across space and across the population, as are their meanings and interpretations. As my research demonstrates, people on Pulau

Penyengat, depending on the time and place, make conscious and strategic decisions to perform national identity in particular ways. At the same time, their performances are produced by power and they unconsciously cite practices which reproduce or subvert national identity. A reformulation of Butler and Goffman’s conceptualizations that acknowledges the multi-layered aspect of performance allows a more nuanced

analysis of the citizens’ embodied relationships with the state.

296

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Glossary of Acronyms and Non-English terms

ABRI (Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Armed Forces of Indonesia Indonesia) bahasa language baju kurung Malay women’s traditional clothes, long skirt and long tunic set baju Melayu Malay shirt (lit), refers to male and traditional clothes Balai Adat traditional community hall bangsa nation bapak or Pak father, mister, sir batik refers both to the type of cloth and a shirt with a batik pattern, esp. worn by men on formal occasions or civil servants Bhinneka Tunggal Ika Unity in Diversity (Indonesia’s National Motto) bodoh stupid, ignorant bupati district or regional head, below governor and above camat camat sub-district officer desa village; the lowest administrative unit in Indonesia’s bureaucracy gerak jalan marching, held as village competitions Golkar (Golongan Karya) work groups (lit.); the government- sanctioned dominant political grouping during the Suharto regime gotong-royong mutual community help Hari Kemerdekaan Independence Day (August 17, 1945) Heerendienst unpaid service to the lord in colonial times Ibu or Bu mother, married woman, respected woman kabupaten district (below province and above sub- district in government hierarchy) kantor kelurahan village district office kampungan literally ‘village-like’, countrified, boorish kecamatan subdistrict office kepala desa village head Kepri Propinsi Kepulauan Riau (Riau Islands Province) Kelurahan village district Komanden Commander (used as the person directing the Upacara Bendera) kota city / town lomba desa village competition lurah head of village, representing the state maju progressive 320

merdeka freedom orang laut sea nomads Pancasila ‘Five Principles’ of Indonesian state ideology: belief in one supreme god, a just and civilized humanitarianism, national unity, popular sovereignty guided by wisdom through consensual consultation and representation, and social justice. peci black velvet cap worn by working class Muslim men pembangunan development pencak silat Malay martial art PKK (Pembinaan Kesejateraan Keluarga) Committee for the Promotion of Family Prosperity PMP (Pendidikan Moral Indonesia) Moral Pancasila Education pompong canoe-like boat with a motor that seats about 20-40, found in the Riau Islands and used for transporting people short distances Propinsi Kepulauan Riau Riau Islands Province pulau island raja Literally ‘king’, on Pulau Penyengat refers to a descendent of the sultan romusha Japanese term for ‘volunteers’ during the occupation. Actually labor conscripts, many of whom died overseas on Japanese projects. Rukun Tetangga (RT) A neighbourhood subgrouping consisting of about 30 households Rukun Warga (RW) hamlet rumah adat house of tradition, usually a village communal building in which traditional cultural activities take place rupiah Indonesian currency ($1 Sing. = 5,200 rupiah) SD (Sekolah Dasar) primary or elementary school Seikerei the act of bowing deeply in the most respectful way towards Japan sekolah school Senam Pagi Indonesia Indonesia’s morning exercise silat (also called pencak silat) Malay martial art SMA (Sekolah Menengah Atas) senior secondary school SMP (Sekolah Menengah Pertama) lower secondary school songket traditional short woven sarong Malay men wear over pajama set sukarela volunteer taiso Japanese military-style exercises, usually carried out at school before classes began 321

(now Senam Pagi) takro an indigenous game played with a rattan ball, played like volleyball only using the feet using a badminton net tonarigumi the Japanese word for neighbourhood association - now RT, or Rukun Tetangga Upacara Bendera flag ceremony

322

Appendix 1 - Biographies of interviewees

This Appendix provides brief biographies of the people I spoke with during my fieldwork. These biographies explain the social and economic status of the participant and together, the biographies present a sample of Pulau Penyengat society. I have tried to gather a roughly even number of females and males and a range of people of different ages and social and economic classes.

Table A – School Children Name (Pseudonym) Sex Age Date(s) interviewed 1. Gary M 9 10/05/05, 13/02/06, 20/05/06, 16/08/06, 20/10/06, 07/04/07 Gary is a chubby, happy well-liked boy who enjoys participating in many activities. He is easily enthused, and has strong sense of humour. He is known as being talented at karaoke. Gary was one of my primary child informants as he was very patient and happy to sit and chat. He was curious about what my research and asked many questions about it. Gary’s family is part of the new middle class of families on Pulau Penyengat who are not state-workers, but work in the growing number of private sector jobs. 2. Sigit M 10 10/05/05, 13/02/06, 20/05/06, 20/10/06 Sigit is best friends with Donny. They are in the same class and live nearby. Sigit is a sensitive boy who has dramatic mood swings. He enjoys following the rules and tries to fit in, although he struggles with his emotions. He often breaks down and cries when upset by something seemingly small and, for this reason, often seems younger than ten. Sigit is the youngest of many children and several of his older siblings have left Penyengat for jobs in Batam. 3. Manis F 6 15/11/05, 13/02/06, Manis was four years old when I first met her. She is now six and has started school. She is Ika’s daughter and has grown up in the safe environment of Pulau Penyengat. She has only occasional telephone contact with her father and his family as they live in Jakarta. While Manis’s grandmother is ethnically Chinese, Manis is very dark and I have been told she has very Malay features. She is known for being bright, charming and funny. 4. Tuti F 7 13/02/06 Tuti lives with her grandparents for reasons I do not know, although this does not seem to negatively affect her socially. Tuti’s grandfather does mechanical repairs for motorcycles and autorickshaws on the island and runs a gas station in his front yard. 5. Dina F 11 13/02/06 Dina’s mother is a successful tailor and is therefore relatively well-off, with one of the only families on the island to have a domestic helper. Dina is a mediocre student who is more focused on socializing and her appearance than on her studies. She is part of a tight clique of popular pre-teen girls who try to dress trendy and act older than their age. 6. Noor F 12 13/02/06, 21/05/06, Noor is a tall athletic girl who is just beginning to be conscious of her clothes and appearance. However, she is known as being the fastest runner at her school and loves to challenge people to races that she inevitably wins. 7. Ricki M 11 7/04/07 323

Ricki is a boy who enjoys the company of dancers and performers. He does not have the body for Malay dancing (he is considered quite heavy) but often performs comedy routines as part of wedding entertainment, dressing up in drag as a flamboyant, high- class older Malay lady. He does not play with children his own age and has no interest in school but is popular and well-liked among the adults and youths who take dance classes. Ricki’s family is poor and does not have a water pump so everyday Ricky or his older brother take a wooden wheel barrow cart several hundred meters to a communal hand pump to fill buckets up for washing and cooking. 8. Zalmidian M 9 7/04/07 Zalmidian is a loud kid who is often the instigator in naughtiness. He comes from a poor family and his dad is not around much and there is talk that he has left the family several times. Zalmidian seems to be looked up to by his friends but he often bullies them. 9. Elli F 8 08/04/07 Elli is a shy girl who cares frequently cares for her little brother, taking him around the island with her and her friends. Her mother is busy with another younger sibling who has been sickly and as a result Elli seems neglected. 10. Dewi F 9 08/04/07 Dewi is a quiet girl from a very poor family. She enjoys doing many things considered ‘boyish’, has short hair (unusual for Pulau Penyengat) and does not fit in with other children. She prefers to play with her younger siblings or sit quietly with the adults. 11. Adit M 12 7/04/07 Adit is a highly intelligent and thoughtful child who strives to do his best in school. He is curious about many things and watches documentaries on television and enjoys studying his globe. His father works on ships and is rarely around and his mother does not work. He is considered a promising student at school and stands out as having great potential, although he is from a low-status family. Adit wants to be a teacher when he grows up. 12. Ismit M 8 7/04/07 Ismit and his big sister Arista are good students and receive lots of support and encouragement from their parents to do well in school as a way of improving themselves and of one day getting a good job. Their father is some kind of business man / trader and their mother is a housewife. Ismit always has his hair combed and slicked down before going off to school with his uniform starched and ironed, in contrast to his classmates who are often dirty and have rumpled uniforms at school. 13. Putri F 7 08/04/07 Putri’s mom owns a cafe near the square and eats there most days. Putri likes to watch television all day, and it takes some pressure for her to stop watching it. With the television on in the cafe, Putri lies on a pillow to watch after she gets home from school. Putri also like to watch volleyball and often follows her mom to her games. 14. Ayu F 8 08/04/07 Ayu is a responsible young girl whose mother sells snacks to supplement her father’s erratic income. Ayu’s mother sells snacks to the teachers at Ayu’s school and has Ayu take containers of snacks to school, then brings home the money to her mother. Ayu joined Gerak Jalan with several of her friends. 15. Nurhasanah F 9 08/04/07 Nurhasanah participated in Gerak Jalan and is also a Senam Pagi Indonesia leader. She aims to be a teacher like her cousins. Her father is a pompong driver and her 324

mother is a homemaker. 16. Arista F 10 08/04/07 Arista is pushed to study hard in school and not to watch too many cartoons. Like her brother Ismit, Arista is expected to work hard in school in hopes that she will one day be a teacher. Her mother sends her to school with her hair neatly braided with ribbons and her uniforms freshly pressed. 17. Jefry M 13 07/04/07 Jefry is a middle class boy who enjoys playing takro, and is often seen practicing in the main square. Hi father has a position in the city government in Tanjung Pinang.

Table B – Youths Name (Pseudonym) Sex Age Date(s) interviewed 1. Ina F 19 17/02/06 Ika is attending the new (and only) accredited university in Riau Islands Province where she studies business. Ika is part of the growing movement of youth who are more Muslim in many ways that their parents’ generation. While Ika likes to shop and wear fashionable clothes, she does not leave the house without wearing a head scarf as a key part of her identity is being a ‘good Muslim girl’. She is wholesome, very helpful and strives to live by a strict moral code. 2. Bella F early-20s Agustin plays on the national women’s volleyball team in Jakarta, the only elite athlete from Pulau Penyengat. She has lived in Jakarta for several years yet frequently comes back to Pulau Penyengat for holidays and weddings. She is very different from other young women on the island as she is extremely tall and dresses simply with no make-up and athletic clothes, rather than the tight jeans and skimpy tops worn by girls in her age group on the island. In this way, she is similar to her mother, who never wears make-up or jewellery, even to weddings, something that is highly unusual on the island. Agustin is a success story of how a villager can climb through the local, regional, provincial and national levels of sports. While people are proud of her, they do not make a fuss about her when she is home. Agustin is well-liked and gives off a positive energy. 3. Uji M early-20s 17/02/06 Uji hopes to work at one of the resorts on Bintan. He is currently studying English and hopes to be accepted into a several months long training program offered on the island, after which he may be offered full-time employment if successful. In his ambitions to work in a resort, Uji is not focused on a better life for himself so much as leaving the village, getting a relatively high-paying job that is lighter work than other fishing or factory work, and attracting girls with his status. Uji has a cousin who worked in a resort and is enchanted by the stories of wealthy foreigners and the relative social freedom that a job away from the village would bring. Uji plays takro in the square for a team on Pulau Penyengat. 4. Zul M 21 17/02/06 Zul is a dancer but has no other employment. He has trained on Pulau Penyengat for several years and has traveled to Malaysia and several places in Indonesia. Since his dancing performances pay very little, he relies on his parents for money. 5. Santi F 19 17/02/06 Santi has recently finished highschool and but does not have good enough grades or 325

enough money to go to the local university in Tanjung Pinang. Santi has an active social life and makes frequent trips to Tanjung Pinang to spend time with her boyfriend. She wants to sign up for an English class in the future so she can get a job in a hotel but has not made any solid steps towards finding a class or the means to pay for it. Santi is frustrating her parents who see her as wanting to get rich quick without working hard. 6. Aling F early-20s Aling lives in a relatively isolated part of Pulau Penyengat. She has only been to the west coast of Bintan and would like to go to Singapore, Jakarta, Bali and England. She enjoys watching travel documentaries and wants to learn other languages but has no opportunities to do so. 7. Ninik F 19 17/02/06 Ninik enjoys dancing and belongs to the ‘elite’ groups of young dancers from Penyengat who dress up in elaborate royal Malay costumes and perform a few times per month at government ceremonies, business events at hotels, and national events held regionally and in Jakarta. Ninik has been dancing since the government paid for a Malay dance instructor to come to Pulau Penyengat and built a stage for dancing several years ago. She is seen as being a skilled dancer and a pretty girl. Ninik comes from an average family background – her family is not a descendent of the royal family, but they are not among the poor families. 8. Lela F 17 17/02/06 Lela is a high school student who wants to be a nurse. She is the youngest of many brothers and sisters who financially support her aged parents. 9. Didi M 15 08/04/07 Didi’s hobby is music and takes classes and jams at the ‘school of rock’ on Pulau Penyengat. He also takes gendang [Malay drum] lessons on the stage in the square accompanying the dance practice. 10. Boy M 18 Boy works as a coolie and as a guard. His guard job entails sitting / sleeping on the jetty in Tanjung Pinang where the boats to and from Pulau Penyengat dock and guarding the motorcycles owned by Pulau Penyengat residents. Because there is no convenient way to transport motorcycles from Penyengat to Bintan Island, residents who work in Tanjung Pinang park their motorcycles permanently on the jetty. With rising motorcycle theft, motorcycle owners on Penyengat have banded together to pay people to guard them all night. This is the lowest type of job with little pay and low social status. In his free time Boy goes fishing or prawn hunting and either gives what he catches to his family to eat or sells it in Tanjung Pinang.

Table C – State Workers Name (Pseudonym) Sex Age Date(s) interviewed 1. Pak Acay M late-40s 16/08/06 A former school teacher and principal, Pak Acay is now working for the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and is the driving force behind the developments in Pulau Penyengat. 2. Pak Sudirman M mid-late 50s 17/08/06, 12/02/06 326

Pak Sudirman is the principal of one of the Sekolah Dasar (elementary school) on the island. He and his wife also run the most popular daytime café that lies across from the mosque. He strongly believes that Indonesians are naturally lazy, undisciplined and unintelligent but that these characteristics can be changed through physical and mental effort. He is strict at school with his teachers and students but very gentle and well-liked outside of school. 3. Haja Taty F early 40s 15/02/06 Haja Taty is a school teacher. Her husband, a civil servant, is a supportive of her work and wants all of his children to go to university and be professionals. Haja Taty likes Pulau Penyengat but feels people are lazy there, as there is not the energy to push people to better themselves. She claims that most people on Pulau Penyengat will not work if they have enough food for that day, not thinking about tomorrow until they need more food, when they will find work or go fishing. 4. Hendri M early 30s 15/02/06 Hendri is a married man and a new father who works for Pulau Penyengat’s Kelurahan office. He is a descendent from the royal family and has gained employment with the state through family connections. His wife is a housewife and he lives on one of the more modern, well-furnished homes on the island. 5. Fatimah F 40s 18/02/06, 11/02/06 Fatimah works as an elementary school teacher on Pulau Penyengat, teaching P.E. and several other subjects. 6. Malik M early-40s 17/02/06 Malik is a descendent of the sultan and is a powerful figure on the island. His father was well-respected and a symbol of the island’s regal past. Malik has taken over from his father and used his father’s connections to carry out his vision for Penyengat. He completed an undergraduate degree in Yogyakarta, something that gives him prestige not only for being educated but for studying in the most nationally prestigious place. He also married a central Javanese woman who comes from a powerful and relatively wealthy family. Malik is not the official leader of the island as he was not elected but functions as the representative based on his connections in government. He has angered many residents who feel that he is speaking for them even though he is not close with the community. There is the perception (which is true) that he siphons off money from the government that has been earmarked for projects in Pulau Penyengat. 7. Yani F early-20s 17/02/06 Yani is a teacher in training at a school in Senggarang, Chinese village a short boat ride away from Pulau Penyengat and Tanjung Pinang. She has a large family who lives in a cluster of houses set back from the sea, on a hot rocky patch off the paved path. Her family is not royalty. Her father is a pompong driver and her mother is a housewife. Both of her parents have encouraged her and her brother to strive for government jobs that provide a pension. Yani is social, very motivated and participates in a number of activities. She was the one to organize the winning team of family and friends in the Gerak Jalan, the marching competition, herself acting as the Komandan (Commander) for her team. 8. Zuwirna F 22 7/05/06, 20/10/07 Zuwirna attends an Islamic training college in Tanjung Pinang and hopes to open a small Islamic school on Pulau Penyengat. Her dream would be to go to Egypt to study Islam and Arabic but she has no funds for that and aims to marry her boyfriend in the coming year. She is very conservative in dress and values and is quick to judge and dismiss those who do not adhere to her values. However, Zuwirna is very focused and supportive of those she trusts and believes in. 327

9. Ani F early-40s 19/02/06 The only full-time staff at the Pulau Penyengat clinic. Trained as a nurse, Ani provides information about family planning, administers immunization shots, ... Because the clinic is small, has a low budget, and caters to chronic ailments of many villagers with little money, she tries to find low-cost solutions to common problems such as diarrhoea, constipation, arthritis, skin conditions, and so on. She grows many plants with medicinal properties to provide cheap alternatives to factory-made medicines. These plants are grown on Ani’s initiative and chopped and ground herself. Officially she is not supposed to do this, but realistically there are no other ways to provide medicine on the budget she is given and for what patients can afford. The state health practitioners who come to the clinic once per week and once per month are supportive of herbal medicines. Ani is from Bintan and did her training in Sumatra and was posted to the clinic in Pulau Penyengat. 10. Yudi M 20s 12/05/06, 25/04/08 Yudi works as a civil servant in Tanjung Pinang. Originally from Palembang (Sumatra), Yudi has been transferred to several places in Indonesia before Riau. He along with several other civil servants from Riau have been sent to Singapore for training over the past two years. 11. Agus M 40s 07/05/07 Agus works at Senayan, the national stadium complex, as a fitness trainer. He spent a number of years in the U.S. for university and speaks English well. He is well- connected and introduced me to several national athletes and national sports coaches and trainers. Agus has strong views on how Indonesia’s sports could improve, but is frustrated by the lack of political will to do so. He also critiques dated approaches used that are preventing Indonesian athletes from excelling. 12. Haja Tuti M late-40s 17/02/06, 11/10/06 Haja Tuti is an elementary school teacher and widow with no children. She lives a quiet life by herself and does not get involved in village gossip and activities. Her husband was a civil servant and she seems to live a comfortable life with her husband’s pension and her salary. 13. Haz M 40s 16/10/06 Haz used to work in a secondary school in Batam, where he taught Pancasila philosophy. He now works in some capacity for the state as part of the recent expansion of the Kepri tourism program, one of the many people drawing a shady salary from the as-yet non-existent tourism industry. He has a dynamic personality and is good at cultivating connections for his own benefit. I never saw him working but he is apparently well-off. 14. Yuli F mid-20s Yuli is friends with and the former student of Pak Acay. Pak Acay has a large budget to improve Pulau Penyengat and has the discretion to decide how the money gets spent. He has hired Yuli in the vague area of Pulau Penyengat tourism, although she speaks no English and has no training in tourism. She receives a salary equivalent to a school teacher’s yet does not work. This is a source of contention among fellow islanders who are frustrated about the overt nepotism and the ‘salaries without a job’.

Table D – Adults – non-state workers Name (Pseudonym) Sex Age Date(s) interviewed 1. Bu Niar F early 50s 17/08/06 328

Bu Niar is a married woman with four children. She is among the poorest on the island and lives with her family in a small wooden shack over the ocean along a piece of coast with few other houses. Most houses on the island are now made of concrete and built on the ground. That Bu Niar and her family still live in a house of wood over the sea indicates her level of poverty. Bu Niar is from another island in Riau and moved here after her marriage to her husband, a local. Her husband is a rickshaw driver, a job that carries no prestige. Bu Niar runs the only gift shop on the island, selling sea shells and knick knacks to the occasional Malaysian tourist. 2. Pak Deni M mid-40s 18/03/06, 17/08/06, 13/11/06 Pak Deni is a man in his mid-40s who has traveled around the world working on ships for most of his life. He is of Bugis ancestry and comes from a long line of sea men. Pak Deni married a local Penyengat woman. He has spent time as a captain on the small boat that ferries tourists between Singapore and Tioman Island on the east coast of Malaysia and currently does some piloting on ships in the Riau region. He is happy to be back on Pulau Penyengat living with his wife and daughters and is making additions on his home partly for more space for his family but also to one day be able to be able to host foreigners in his home as a homestay. He has a very international perspective and is the most alternative in his views of anyone I met on Penyengat. Pak Deni feels that Penyengat and the Riau Islands more broadly could easily have become part of Singapore or Malaysia if historical events had been different. He finds it amusing that there is a recent push from the state to portray Penyengat as a pure Malay place, pointing out that the Royal Family itself is a mix of Bugis, Arab, Chinese, and others. He sees it the state interest in Penyengat as opportunistic and financially motivated. He perceives the state as being aware of Penyengat’s power. Where it was once simply ignored, now that Riau is economically powerful and tourism potential is seen, he believes that the government simply wishes to control it. He sees great potential for Penyengat to develop its tourism, although he has joined the side who wishes to see development in local rather than government hands. He sees that many tourists and researchers come to Penyengat but he feels Penyengat does not benefit from them being there. He as many ideas about getting researchers to provide language lessons while they are here to better equip them for the tourism industry. 3. Harry M early-50s 11/05/06 Harry is the 5th generation to run the main store on Pulau Penyengat. While there are many very small stalls around the island run out of peoples’ living rooms selling cigarettes, candy and instant noodles, Harry’s store has a wide range of household goods. Harry and his family are the only remaining Chinese family on Pulau Penyengat. He said he had not had any problems from Malays living on the island, although he told me in private that he felt the islanders were lazy. He and his family do not socialize with the islanders except in the shop. Their adult son also socializes with other Chinese Indonesians living in Senggarang, the Chinese village a short boat ride away, and Tanjung Pinang. He is part of many young Chinese Indonesians in Tanjung Pinang who strongly associate themselves with international Chinese culture. He listens almost exclusively to Chinese language music, takes mandarin lessons and has a Chinese Indonesian girlfriend. Aside from the shop, they are completely disengaged from Pulau Penyengat society. 4. Jojo M late-30s 16/10/06 Jojo is a make-up artist who is openly gay. He lives on Pulau Penyengat but also has his own home in Tanjung Pinang where he has his own studio. Jojo does make-up for television dramas and does bridal make-up and wedding decorations. At several of the 329

weddings on Pulau Penyengat I attended, he had done the bride’s make-up, arranged the bride and groom’s costumes and created elaborate set pieces for wedding photos and had photos taken by one of his photographers. He is well-liked on Pulau Penyengat and is close with his mother, who lives on with several of her other children and grandchildren. Jojo is flamboyant in his style of dress, often wearing make-up and women’s clothing. At weddings he frequently wears a flashy baju kurung, the traditional silk tunic and long skirt worn by Malay women. 5. Sayed M early-30s 9/12/04, 07/02/06, 18/03/06, 10/05/06 Sayed is a relative of Malik but leads the opposition to Malik’s plans for Penyengat. Where Malik seeks to get the state involved at all levels in order to quickly develop Penyengat into a tourist center, Sayed and his allies want to use local knowledge to develop the island slowly so locals, rather than outsiders, are in charge and to ensure locals benefit. Sayed is a highschool graduate and is not seen as particularly bright in the same way that Malik is. However, he has worked in several five-star resorts such as Club Med in Bali and in Bintan that have brought him money and a certain amount of prestige. He is seen as being experienced in the tourist industry, but is viewed as arrogant, immature, poorly connected with government and other powerful people, and uncommitted to the island in the long run. He had a long-term Japanese girlfriend that he met while he was a windsurfing instructor at Club Med in Bali. They were together since the first time I visited Penyengat and have recently married. He had travelled extensively with his girlfriend, a travel agent in Tokyo, taking vacations in Thailand, Singapore and Japan. Sayed wears expensive clothes and accessories and has rarely been on Penyengat over the past 10 years. For this reason, people don’t trust his motives or that he will even stay on the island. His girlfriend’s father has a position for him in his business but he committed two years to trying to make his plans for developing Penyengat work. The two years he gave himself have ended and he recently married his girlfriend with ceremonies in Japan and in Penyengat. He has recently moved to Japan where he will begin work. 6. Rini F late-40s 12/11/06 Rini is a popular, active, energetic woman whose daughter is the volleyball player on the national team in Jakarta. Rini works as a part-time seamstress, although less frequently now as she does not need the money. Rini has a positive outlook and takes part in many state and non-state activities such as the marching competitions, volleyball matches, village-level state discussions, and she hosted several guests from Jakarta who came to Riau Islands and stopped briefly on Pulau Penyengat. She is reliable and someone other villagers turn to for support. Rini supports people who take action over words and has encouraged her children to focus too much on clothes and make-up at the expense of accomplishments. 7. Yanto M mid-20s 17/08/06 Yanto is a young man who comes from a poor family on Penyengat. His father is a chronic gambler who left the family for several years when Yanto was 15. Because of this, he was forced to quit school and earn an income for his family. He worked as a coolie, in a factory in Batam, as a fisherman, a motorcycle taxi driver in Tanjung Pinang and currently works as a rickshaw driver on Penyengat and many evenings he catches prawns depending on the tides and sells them. Yanto is deeply motivated to improve his lot in life and works extremely hard. He purchased an old wooden house on the island which he paid for with his savings and loans from a bank and a trusted imam at the mosque. He recently paid back the loan and is now using his income for English lessons and obtaining his highschool equivalency. He dreams of attending 330

university but is not well-connected and is not unsure of how he will pay for it. Villagers admire his work ethic but often talk about him as perhaps rising too far above his station in life since he is ‘just a rickshaw driver with a gambler as a father’. Yanto is single and his Javanese girlfriend, a factory worker in Batam who had met him on a day trip holiday from Batam, recently broke off their engagement when he was working a lot to pay off his house. She married someone she perceived as having better prospects. 8. Andi M mid-30s Andi is a single man from the lowest social and economic class on the island. He is friends with Yanto but does not share the same goals of becoming a self-made man. He lives with his widowed mother and several younger siblings and is considered unmarriageable due to his lack of education, his lack of solid income and what is perceived as his unattractive appearance. In Pulau Penyengat society, there is a certain amount of blame on those at the bottom, as it is often felt that it is because you are ‘stupid’ and you somehow earned your social position. While Andi works hard as a rickshaw driver, a fisherman and a prawn catcher, he lacks the confidence in himself as well as the money to find skilled work or training. For example, while many young people from Penyengat have had experience working in resorts in Bintan or elsewhere, Andi is not considered suitable for such work as his body is scarred from hard work, he is missing teeth, cannot speak English and is therefore considered bodoh or ignorant/stupid. He has had little experience off of Penyengat and is the primary caregiver of his mother. 9. Pak Fazrul M 42 18/03/06 Fazrul lives in the housing along the main square that is rented out at a subsidized rate by the mosque. He has converted his small front porch into a woodwork shop where he makes stands for flags. For the month leading up to Independence Day in August, all Indonesian buildings (including homes, businesses, places of prayer) are required to display an Indonesian flag so he is particularly busy in the months leading up to Independence Day. He sells the flag bases year round on the Island and in Bintan. 10. Bu Desi F 40 07/05/06, 13/02/06 Desi is a teacher in a supplementary Islamic school that some children attend after public school. Although the salary is extremely low, she is guaranteed a pension in retirement. 11. Bu Erlina F 52 07/05/06 Erlina is a housewife and a widow who sells cigarettes and packages of instant noodles from her living room. Her children are grown up and send her money to support her so she lives a comfortable life. She is helping to raise her two grandchildren, one of her divorced daughter and the other of her son. Erlina is ethnically Chinese but was adopted by a Malay family as a baby. She has some contact with her genetic family and has recently developed an interest and pride in her Chinese side. She often wears typically Chinese jewellery such as jade bracelets and necklaces while always wearing her Muslim head scarf. 12. Naked Man M 40s 28/11/07 The Naked Man is a local character who is known for never wearing a shirt and often no sandals as part of his personal philosophy. He is working class and involved in maritime activity. Known as a free thinker, he openly rejects the dominant norm when he feels it is not right. For example, he believes that followers of Islam are wrong to feel they need to cover up in mosques, or at all. Allah sees through all the costumes directly into the soul so he believes that there is no point in trying to hide behind religious clothing. He has done hard labour all of his life and has had minimal 331

education. 13. Amelia F late-30s 07/05/06 Amelia is married to Pak Deni and is a housewife with a teenager, an elementary school age child and a newborn baby. While she feels frustrated that her daughters are ‘lazy’ and do not work hard in school she feels that life is good on Pulau Penyengat and would never want to move away. Amelia and her husband have built a large addition to their home to accommodate their growing family. Both are ambitious and would like to eventually be able to open a homestay on the island to host visitors. 14. Rosyani F mid-40s 20/10/06 Rosyani is a housewife who has made a small stall at the side of her house from which to sell small snacks, es campur [ground ice dessert] and drinks. Her stall is popular with children as she makes snacks kids like and it is along the path leading to two elementary schools. 15. Wasriah F late-40s 20/10/06 Wasriah has several children and lives in mosque-subsidized housing along the square and has converted her front room into a cafe selling simple meals and drinks. She is hard-working and enterprising and is able to live a middle class-ish lifestyle on Pulau Penyengat. In pre-colonial times the row of houses rented out by the historic mosque used to house visitors who came to the island for religious purposes. The rent is extremely low by current standards (just a few dollars per month). 16. Mega F late-20s 20/10/06 Mega is a young housewife who lives with her parents and at her mother-in-law’s house, a 10 minute walk away. Her husband works on a ship laying fibre-optic cable in the Pacific and is frequently away. When his ship comes to shore, it docks in Singapore for several weeks, during which time Erlina and their baby are able to come and visit. Because of her travel experience and her husbands’s comparatively high salary, Erlina enjoys a higher status than her family and friends. 17. Akhmad M mid-30s 18/03/06 Akhmad has held a variety of jobs and currently works in a factory in Batam, although is able to come back to Pulau Penyengat frequently. He has never married and is seen as unattractive and kasar [rough, unsophisticated]. He works for a Japanese electronics company in Batam and has travelled to Japan for some training. He would like to move back to Pulau Penyengat but sees no job opportunities there for him. He says he is happy never to marry, a statement that (in Pulau Penyengat society) means he is lacking in morals and must be living a hedonistic life of sin in Batam, which he likely is, given the number of times he asked me if I liked karaoke (karaoke bars are places to meets prostitutes and buy drugs and alcohol). 18. Subur M early-60s 18/03/06 Subur is descended from island royalty and is retired from his job as a clerk in the local government. He now putters around, does some work as a handyman, and manages the historic family home owned by his older brother who now lives in Batam with his family. This property was passed down from his father who was a Muslim cleric in the island’s historic mosque. The home has many family relics and hosted then-president Abdurahman Wahid on his quick visit to the mosque. Subur is father to Ady and is preparing for the marriage of his daughter. 19. Ansur M late-40s 18/03/06 Ansur runs a ‘school of rock’ from his home on Pulau Penyengat, teaching rock music classes to children and youth who want to learn to play guitar, bass, or drums. He also rents out the instruments and room by the hour for practice space for bands. His 332

classes are popular and there are usually crowds of youth hanging around outside his home listening to jam sessions or waiting their turn on the instruments. Ansur has had experience playing in bands in various cities in Indonesia but enjoys living in his hometown of Pulau Penyengat. He is well-liked among the youth. 20. Rahiz M mid-20s 21/10/06 Rahiz comes from a poor family and has no father. He has little education and has been working as coolie, a bicycle rickshaw driver in the market area of Tanjung Pinang, and a deckhand on boat. He has few job prospects and has been considering trying to find work in a factory on Batam. 21. Yusuf M 50s 18/02/06 Yusuf is a musician and plays traditional Malay music in a group of mainly older men. They get hired for events such as weddings and increasingly for government events. During the day Yusuf putters around doing home improvements and looking after his grandchildren. 21. Veronika F Mid-20s May/06, August/06, 17/08/06 Veronika is a single divorced mother of a six-year-old and is one of my primary informants. During her marriage she lived with her Betawi husband in Jakarta. After separating, she and her daughter moved back to Pulau Penyengat to live with her mother. Veronika is known as being a intelligent young women with potential. She is also popular on the island as she is known as being kind and willing to talk with anyone and there is often a large group of friends and neighbours gathered there to chat with her. For these reasons, she is frequently courted by government groups and political parties to work for them. Veronika is a part of the P2KP, a government volunteer organization that is meant to tackle urban problems.

Veronika’s mother is ethnically Chinese but was adopted into a Malay family as a baby, a common scenario in the region. Veronika herself is often mistaken for being Chinese by shopkeepers in Tanjung Pinang. This seems not to be an issue for Veronika or her mother. 22. Adit M 50s 28/10/07 Adit has been involved in the fishing industry his whole life. He still spends many months fishing and builds boats in the off-season. Adit is extremely hard-working and does not sit in the square to chat over tea. He always keeps busy with little projects and socializes little.

Table E – Senior Citizens Name (Pseudonym) Sex Age Date(s) interviewed 1. Pak Hari M 70s 17/08/06, 07/05/06 Pak Hari is an old widower who lives with his children and grandchildren in a big house in Pulau Penyengat. He is one of the few seniors on Pulau Penyengat who is still lucid and is able to remember the Japanese occupation. He went to school for the first time when he was seven or eight under the Japanese Occupation and is happy to act out what he remembers from his lessons as a child, particularly songs, rituals, Japanese language. Pak Hari was a labourer during his working life, but has been retired for many years now. He is supported by his many grown children. While Pak Hari was too young to remember the Dutch occupation, he recalls the Japanese on Pulau Penyengat, their defeat and the arrival of the British and American warships that came to secure Riau until the Dutch were able to return. He worked for several 333

years in Singapore and travelled frequently between the Riau Islands and Singapore in the 1960s and 70s. Pak Hari used to play the gendang [Malay drum] when he was younger but has not played in years. 2 Pak Agus M 70s 16/08/06 Pah Agus is a loud character who likes to joke and tell stories from the past. He talks over everyone around him partly because he is nearly deaf and partly because he feels that when he has something to say everyone should listen. He is a descendent of the sultan’s family and respected as an important and senior figure on the island and nearly all of his contemporaries are dead. I only met with Pak Agus a couple of times when he felt well enough to leave the house and have a cherished cup of tea in the square. He was confident and eccentric, wearing old dress shoes, shorts, a singlet and a peci with a towel around his neck. Although he is generally dismissed as a crazy old man, I found him to be insightful, articulate and lucid. Unfortunately he was usually unable to hear my questions so he just talked about what came to his mind. 3. Bu Eti F late-60s Bu Eti is a widow who was born on Pulau Penyengat. Although she has four children, they have moved away and she now has no close family on Pulau Penyengat and relies upon the charity of several relatives, neighbours and the mosque for her survival. She also has a small table set up from which she sells cigarettes, candy and water. She has never attended school as she was poor, was needed at home and her parents were afraid to let her stray far from home when the Japanese were on Pulau Penyengat for fear that she would be attacked by Japanese soldiers. She is suffering from dementia that makes her deeply anxious at times. 4. Bu Erlina F 70s Bu Erlina was an old woman who sold Malay kue [small snacks that are eaten for breakfast] every morning from about 5am to about 8am. As a lower class person whose children have moved away or are also poor, Bu Erlina worked all of her life until her death in 2006 while I was on the island. I had many conversations with her in the early mornings about her experiences living her life on Pulau Penyengat. With a loud and teasing personality, Bu Erlina often bluntly told the truth to people when others would be too polite to say anything. She would regularly tell people they were getting fat or their children were naughty or someone’s husband was straying.

(also see Barrell 1980; Duncan and Duncan 1988; Duncan 1990; Mitchell 1994; Kong and Yeoh 2003: 14-15) (also see Clifford 1986; 2000: 272)

(King 2007)

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Appendix 2 – Questions for Interviewees

Semi-structured interview questions

Background information Education: Home village / ethnic identity: Job: Married / children:

Work • Where do you work? How long have your worked there? • Do you like your job? What job would you most like to have if you could choose? • Can you describe your job? (what time do you start / finish, work duties, days off, mandatory / voluntary workplace national rituals and where do these activities take place?) • What are the national holidays in Indonesia? Who gets a holiday on these days? Do you? What do you do on these holidays? • What do you wear to work? What do you like / dislike about work uniforms? • When you wear your work uniform, do you feel different from when you wear regular clothes? Do people treat you differently? Do you feel you must behave differently? • What sorts of national programs have you experienced / seen / taken part in at work? When? How often? Where do they take place? Are these mandatory or optional? Who participates and who does not? Do you enjoy these activities? What do you like / dislike about them? • Why do you think civil servants perform national rituals at work? • What aspects of your job do you like / dislike? What aspects are boring?

Education • What is your school schedule? (start, end, breaks, etc) • What is your favourite part of school? What is your least favourite? • What do you wear to school? What happens if you do not wear that? Why do you think you wear that? • What are the national holidays in Indonesia? Who gets a holiday on these days? Do you? What do you do on these holidays? What do you wear? • Why do you think civil servants perform national rituals at work?

Leisure • What do people on Pulau Penyengat do in their free time? What do you like to do in your free time? • Are you involved in any organized / team activities? Why / why not? • Who organizes these activities? Why do you think they are organized? • Who participate in which activities? • What would you like to do if you could choose? (if you had time / access / money)

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Everyday life

• What do you think when you look at these photos? • What do you think the purpose is behind this activity? • Who do you think this activity is geared towards? Who do you think is excluded from this activity? Why? • Do you participate in this activity? Why / why not? • How did you feel when you were participating in this activity? (Explain) • Do you think others perform this activity in the same way as people on Pulau Penyengat? Are there differences? • Is there anything else you would like to add? Anything you did not get a chance to say?

Reminder to take notes on the following42: • Where does the performance take place? What performances occur where? • Is there an (intended) audience? What is the relationship between the audience and performers? How did the audience react to the performance? What is the role of the audience in adding meaning to the performance? • What are some of the aesthetic aspects of the performance? • What are the exciting / boring / interesting moments? • How is the space of the performance used at different times? • What are the performers wearing? What are the connotations / meanings of their clothes? • What is the relationship between off-stage and on-stage? • Are performances individual or group? • What is the relationship between performers? • To what extent are performances scripted and to what extent is there room for improvisation? What is the ‘correct’ way to perform? • What is the variety of roles for the performers? Are these hierarchical roles or equal? Are there leaders? Who are they? How do the leaders perform differently from the other performers? • What is the pace of the performance? • What is the quality of the gestures? How enthusiastic are the performers? • What is the story being told in the performance? Are the performers aware of this story? Do they have other interpretations? • What is the performance citing or referencing in its style, structure, etc? • How should this performance be notated? (video, camera, notes)

42 In their book Performance Analysis, Counsell and Wolf (2001: 229-32) provide an excellent guideline to aid the researcher in analyzing performances.